Clive Young tells a great story about Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y." from his 1982 solo effort The Nightfly.
Everyone does play “I.G.Y.” It’s become the “Freebird” of pro audio—visit a linecheck at a major concert venue or a speaker demo at AES or InfoComm, and those familiar strains will turn up sooner or later. It’s a well-recorded song, to be sure, which is why it’s always used to illustrate a system’s “tight low end” or “crystal-clear mids” or, to be honest, any other detail they want to point out.
However, the sheer pervasiveness of “I.G.Y.” within the pro audio community as the track that you use to tune or show off your PA is remarkable. The distant second place song is, of all things, “Pulp Culture” from Thomas Dolby’s obscure (but admittedly awesome) 1989 funk album, Aliens Ate My Buick.
Here's Donald Fagen's I.G.Y. so you can test your audio system.
Ben Gazzara was 81. He was an intense actor best known for starring in the John Cassavetes films "Husbands", "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" and "Opening Night". I remember him best as Jackie Treehorn, the pornography mogul and loan shark in the Coen brother's cult classic, The Big Lewbowski.
Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about Check the O.R., a CanCon hit from 1992...
Organized Rhyme is now most famous for including Tom Green, but back in '92 I knew them best as the band the Dream Warriors were supporting. The video for Check the O.R. was shot at Jane and Finch and features a Dream Warriors cameo. At the time it was released, I was actually working at a Food City, but not the one you'll see below.
Nobody outside of Tom Green's family can name a second Organized Rhyme song. Go ahead and try. It's impossible.
Check the O.R., however, was a fun rap song and I still know most of the lyrics by heart. Who doesn't drop a "I lay more chicks than Mother Goose" boast or a "I talk smooth like Lando Calrissian" claim now and then?
Check the O.R. even got remade recently, sort of... here's the Check the O.R. Redux.
Go off like a Canon, you're a copier... that's some gold right there.
If you're around my age, you learned a lot about sex by listening to Q107 on Sunday nights. That's when the Sunday Night Sex Show aired, featuring Sue Johanson.
Sue Johanson told it like it was, without fanfare. It was an open and frank talk about sex and it was both educational and interesting. I didn't just listen to her radio show on Q, I also caught her Cable 10 show, which we all called Sex With Sue. A little Googling tells me that wasn't the name, but that's definitely what we called it.
Sex With Sue is where we all learned that Sue Johanson looked like this:
And of course, who could forget her appearance on Degrassi Junior High as Dr. Sally? Not I, that's for sure.
Can't. Find. Clip. :-(
At some point, Sue Johanson broke through in the USA, which meant we had to share her. That's when stuff like this started to happen.
Ok, confession time... who out there learned some sex stuff from Sex With Sue?
Alan Cross has teamed with Astral Radio to program his own on-line radio station called Squish. As he wrote earlier today, the programming of Squish is is 100% his responsibility.
I'm very jealous. I've wanted to do something like this for quite some time, but I'm not Alan Cross. Luckily for us, Alan Cross is Alan Cross, and he's got a very cool thing brewing here.
I'm listening right now. So far, so good! I could see an on-line station like this getting a good chunk of my work day. At least when I'm not listening to Humble and Fred.
It's amazing how little of the radio I listen to each day is actually on the radio. I listen to CBC Radio One news in the shower, and this and that in the car, but at my work desk it's all web based now.
Give Squish a listen. It's a little tricky to find it. Go here and click on the graphic that reads "Listen to the V Streams". Then look for the Squish graphic down and to the right.
So far, I have two wishes for Squish:
I wish the sound quality was better - it's not bad, but I share Neil Young's concerns
I wish I could see the name and artist for the current song playing Scratch that - it's at the top of the page
Good job, Alan. Thanks Doug, for pointing me in the right direction.
Neil Young had some very interesting things to say on the stage of D: Dive into Media the other day.
"Young is calling for a new digital ecosystem of high quality music files and he believes that Jobs would have gotten there had he lived long enough. On the distribution side, Young isn't particularly concerned with the effects of piracy on artists, he's more concerned that the files that are being shared are of such low quality:"
It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone. [...] Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around. [...] That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it.
I think he's right on point. Piracy is the new radio. There's no point fighting it, you may as well embrace it.
Angelo Dundee was 90. He was the brilliant motivator who worked the corner for Muhammad Ali in his greatest fights and willed Sugar Ray Leonard to victory in his biggest bout.
My kids have had their own Gmail addresses since they were about five years old. I set them up with accounts, added family and close friends to their contact list, and showed them how to communicate with Grandma, their uncles, etc. There's nothing cooler than getting an email from your five year old chock full of heart and rainbow icons.
My son has had his account for five years now, and it's full of history. I'll share YouTube clips with them, pictures, messages. It's a great digital archive of his early years, and he can keep that address forever.
Things haven't gone as smoothly for my daughter. At some point, Google prompted her to enter her birth date. She was born in 2004, and disclosed that to Google. Immediately, Google locked her out of her account. Apparently, you can't have a Gmail account unless you're at least 13 years old.
What irks me is that the account was suspended immediately. There was no opportunity to back-up emails. It was an instant "you're too young - sorry" and all was lost.
Michelle has a new Gmail account, and I've instructed her and James to never disclose their age to Google. They love having their own email account and using Google Chat and it's easy for me to monitor everything to ensure they're using it appropriately.
Google themselves seem to promote the idea of Gmail as a means of capturing a child's history, but in reality, they'll terminate such an account without warning.
Mamas, don't let your babies disclose their birth year to Google.
Clive Young tells a great story about Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y." from his 1982 solo effort The Nightfly.
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Ben Gazzara was 81. He was an intense actor best known for starring in the John Cassavetes films "Husbands", "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" and "Opening Night". I remember him best as Jackie Treehorn, the pornography mogul and loan shark in the Coen brother's cult classic, The Big Lewbowski.
Full disclosure: 
If you're around my age, you learned a lot about sex by listening to Q107 on Sunday nights. That's when the Sunday Night Sex Show aired, featuring Sue Johanson.
My kids have had their own Gmail addresses since they were about five years old. I set them up with accounts, added family and close friends to their contact list, and showed them how to communicate with Grandma, their uncles, etc. There's nothing cooler than getting an email from your five year old chock full of heart and rainbow icons.