Stupidest design of a home page ever?

You decide.

We're really not on Summer hiatus

It just looks that way.

The gather gig is almost over, which I'm just as happy about. On the plus side, it was nice to see I could still write to a deadline, if needed. I turned out a couple of good pieces, and a few "paying the bills" pieces too, given that gather never paid more than ceegar and poker money.

On the negative side... well. Too many negatives to list. In any case, as contract renewal came closer, I dithered back-and-forth, to-and-fro about whether to call it quits after six months. The extra cash was nice, giving me the chance to splurge on book/CD/ceegar/poker indulgences without guilt (Peggy laughs in my head at this point, asking when I don't splurge on indulgences), but I came to really dislike the site and the way it was run. gather is nakedly a site where the content seems only to be there to support the advertising, rather than advertising being used to subsidize the content. And while I'm used to corporate spin, inflation, prevarication, and dissembling, gather took it to such heights that by the end I was reminded of the old joke about how to tell if a politician is lying.

It also concerned me that my wife - who as a rule expresses no opinion about anything that I'm up to - had formed an extreme dislike for gather and stated several times that I should bail the moment my contract expired. I was also feeling guilt about devaluing my writing. gather was getting some pretty good content very cheaply, and that wasn't sitting well with me.

In the end I compromised, and sent off an email to the gather manager nominally in charge of the correspondents' program requesting a pay rate more in line with industry standards for any future work. It was so unlikely that gather would accept the terms that I felt I had in effect resigned. And, on the off chance that they bit, well, I'd cross that bridge when needed. I was asking for enough money to afford noseplugs and perfume.

But the answer was - unsurprisingly - "No," with no option for negotiation, and that was that. By that time I felt relieved that the door was closed, as I was finding it increasingly difficult to treat gather seriously, and had started to point out publicly the emperor's lack of clothes. Disdain is not a good attitude to have about an entity commissioning you to write for it. I'm not even sure the extra money would have made me put a lid on it.

My last column goes up on the 19th. Most of my gather content - if you're checking - is already gone, so I can get the Google searchbots to redirect results away from gather. The last of my stuff should be gone by the beginning of August, and that will be that.

If you joined gather because of me, my apologies.

On a more positive note, like energy - or bullshit, for that matter - nothing Fred writes is ever destroyed, it just changes form. Dreamtime has a new sister site - A Series of Tubes - using much of the video content I originally posted on gather. And I have some ideas for some other things in the works, too.

Those "other things" may put a further damper on fhb. I don't know yet. Like energy - or bullshit - it may be time to change into something new, and maybe, after three years of straight-ahead blogging, it's time to try something else.

Stay tuned. It promises to be an interesting ride.

On gather: "And today's theme is..."

TV! Specifically kid's shows and some of the more memorable theme music you - and I - were listening to on the tube while we were growing up. In honor of my new music video group - A Series of Tubes - which you're all invited to join, you lovely people you, each of these is linked to a Youtube video for your listening and viewing pleasure.

Let's begin - as always in no particular order - with our countdown of kid's show TV themes...

10. The Adventures of Superman

If you're around my age, there's only one Superman, and his name was George Reeves. And, if you're like me, you probably still get a jolt of recognition when you hear the harp glissando that opened The Adventures of Superman. And has there ever been a more succinct and better narrative summary about both a character and his show... "


"Yes, it's Superman, strange visitor from another
planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities
far beyond those of mortal men.

Superman! Who can change the course of mighty
rivers, bend steel in his bare hands; and who,
disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter
for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a
never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the
American way."

That was back in the days when you could say those final two lines with no sense of irony at all.

Full article is here.

At gather: You Say It's Your Birthday?

Well, it's Bob Dylan's (May 24, 1941) birthday too, yeah.

You and Bob also share the day of your birth with Queen Victoria (1819), Tommy Chong (1938), Gary Burghoff (1943), Patti LaBelle (1944), Priscilla Presley (1945) and Rosanne Cash (1955).

The song Happy Birthday to You is celebrating its 114th birthday this year and is generally acknowledged as the most sung song in the English language, followed by For He's A Jolly Good Fellow and Auld Lang Syne, according to the Guinness Book of Records. Thousands of off-key renditions of Happy Birthday are sung every day, and the song has been performed everywhere from Earth orbit to ocean depths. But you'll seldom hear it performed in either a movie or on a television show, because this 19th century ditty is still protected by copyright, and the current holders aggressively protect their interests in the song. You can sing Happy Birthday in a commercial performance, but, boy, you're gonna pay for the privilege.

Link to full article

At gather: Maria Muldaur - Naughty, Bawdy & Blue

If the gig at gather doesn't produce anything else, it did give me the pleasure of hearing Maria Muldaur call me "darling." Here's a clip from my latest column, an interview with Maria on her latest release, Naughty, Bawdy & Blue.

***

Maria Muldaur is in a RV on her way to her next gig somewhere in Iowa when her cell phone rings.

"So, where's the show?" I ask.

"Clear Lake," she answers, which gives me pause. I've never been to Clear Lake Iowa, but the name brings a flood of memories from books and movies anyway. A skinny young man in horn-rimmed glasses, an improbable rock star, blasting out a Bo Diddley beat; teenage girls in pleated skirts doing coordinated dance moves, a heavy-set guy thumping a tambourine, dancing onto the stage, surprisingly light on his feet; now a grinning Chicano kid coming out and adding his guitar to the mix. And the orchestra keeps the beat going, the horns lifting Not Fade Away higher and higher as the group laughs, unplug their guitars, and wave goodbye to the audience as they walk off-stage one-by-one.

"Thank y'all! See you next year," the last one, the tall, skinny guy, calls back to the crowd... and they're gone.

Clear Lake is one of those iconic rock places, like Max Yasgur's farm - or maybe the Altamont Speedway. It was the last stand of the Winter Dance Party of 19 and 59.

"Whoa," I say, back in the future but totally thrown out of interview gear. "Buddy Holly territory."

"Yeah," Maria answers. "We're even playing the same place, the Surf Ballroom. But at least we're not flying out."

Link to full article

Gather: Study War No More Countdown

This week's gather column, and one I'm proud of...

10. Last Train to Clarksville - The Monkees (1966)

Last Train to Clarksville's narrator is insistent with the repeated line, "... and I don't know if I'm ever coming home" because he was shipping out to Vietnam. According to the co-writer of the 1966 hit, Bobby Hart, "We couldn't be too direct with The Monkees. We couldn't really make a protest song out of it - we kind of snuck it in." Watch/listen on YouTube.

9. Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970)

In a Rolling Stone interview, John Fogerty noted, "Julie Nixon was hanging around with David Eisenhower, and you just had the feeling that none of these people were going to be involved with the war. In 1969, the majority of the country thought morale was great among the troops, and like eighty percent of them were in favor of the war. But to some of us who were watching closely, we just knew we were headed for trouble." Watch/listen on Google Video.

Here's the link to the full "countdown" list.

Countdown At the Movies

Cross-promotion time again. My latest gather column is up. A free taste (to get you hooked)...

We're doing a musical movie countdown this week in honor of the 79th Academy Awards, coming to a TV screen near you this Sunday, the 25th.

As it's too easy to include musicals with great music - from Singing in the Rain to Hair, I excluded them from this list of movie songs and music that plays on an extended engagement in my Theater of Memory.

10. "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" - from The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Featured in Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of his 1934 original, and sung by Doris Day. "Que Sera, Sera" received the 1956 Academy Award for Best Original Song. It was the third Oscar in this category for songwriters Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.

The song has an interesting history, considering that Hitchcock initially didn't want Doris Day (she was a part of a package deal in order for Hitchcock to secure the services of Jimmy Stewart) and didn't want a song for the movie, even though the studio was pressing him to use something to feature Day's voice.

Hitchcock figured out how to get a song in the movie - in fact, it became a key plot element - and changed his opinion about Day, who he later said did a fine job. He commissioned Livingston and Evans to write something that "had a foreign title" and was to be "sung to a little boy." The two had recently seen the Ava Gardner film, The Barefoot Contessa, where the character played by Rossano Brazzi had the family motto "Che Sera, Sera." Evans and Livingston switched the Italian "Che" to "Que," apparently feeling that Spanish was more accessible in the U.S. than Italian, and came up with the lyrics.

Continuing the comedy of errors, Doris Day was not at all thrilled by the prospect of singing "Que Sera Sera." In fact, she refused to record it, until ultimately bowing from pressure by Paramount. Reportedly, she did the song in one take and walked out of the studio saying, "That's the last time you'll ever hear that."

Of course, the song became a signature piece for Day, who would use it as the theme for her television sitcom series, and sing snippets of it in several of her other movies, including Please Don't Eat the Daisies and The Glass-Bottom Boat.

Sources: Google Answers; Wikipedia

9. Theme from per un Pugno di Dollari (A Fistful of Dollars) - Ennio Morricone (as Dan Savio) (1964)

Da-da-da-dah! WAH WAH WAH! Hired by Leone for Per un pugno di dollari on the strength of some of his song arrangements, Morricone would revolutionize how Westerns sounded, just as Leone would bend the Western movie genre totally out of shape. The soundtrack's exceedingly strange instrumentation included bells, electric guitars, harmonicas, and a jew's harp, and would be repeated with variations in the two succeeding Man with No Name movies.

Source: IMDB

The full list is right here.

Fred on Gather

I have so many cross-promotions going, it's getting hard to keep track of them all. :-)

But for those of you who have asked, here's the link to my Gather page, where you can keep up on my weekly column, Music You Never Forget, as well as other postings. If you're a die hard Fred fan, you can even join Gather and click on that little "Connect" button you'll find in the left column, and then get email updates whenever I post something "new."

"New" is in quotes because at least one reader expressed disappointment that I've been reworking several articles that originally appeared either in fhb or Dreamtime. And, that's true, but considering the size of my audience in both blogs, I figure I can get away with pushing re-runs out to a larger readership. Constant Readers - that would be you, O husband of Joyride - will be happy to know that yesterday's column, Somebody Say a Prayer, is brand-spanking new, although I just cross-posted a version to Dreamtime.

Between Dreamtime and Gather, I'm now writing the equivalent of two weekly columns, as well as regular posts on fhb, and let us say, only getting fully reimbursed in the spiritual sense for my efforts. But, by God, I'm having fun, and who can ask for more?

That Big Announcement Time

Thanks to Dreamtime I've signed a deal and will be writing a weekly music column for "Gather," a social networking site, that's sometimes been described as "the MySpace for the NPR set." You can see the site here...

http://www.gather.com/

... and you can track my writing at Gather here.

The column's name is currently "Under the Radar," although that will be changing to avoid confusion with a music mag of the same name.

Whatever I end up naming the column, it will have the same general theme as Dreamtime; stuff you wouldn't hear on the radio; trivia, stories about music and musicians. Sometimes the content will be the same thing as I'm posting over at the Dreamtime blog - edited to make sense for non-Theme Time listeners - sometimes it will diverge. I have a couple of things in mind that wouldn't fit in Dreamtime that I've been hankering to write.

Gather has been around for about a year. It's Boston-based, partially funded by NPR, the Hearst Corporation, several others. It don't think it's been as successful as anyone would like.

When I joined last year Gather reminded me of an out-of-control writing workshop, with everyone clamoring for attention for their own writing and no one willing to read anything else. Most people who I sent to Gather found the interface very confusing, too, as I did. I cross-posted a few articles from fhb and Dreamtime at Gather with little reaction over the past year, and eventually decided it was too much of a hassle for the 'lil Gather dollars that the articles earned.

But I think they're making a good move, I'm one of what will eventually be 70-80 "Gather Correspondents," for various groups such as politics; music; writing; movies; cooking; and so on - and whose agenda - outside of writing - will be to put some order and consistency around the chaos.

Gather has changed their user interface too. It now seems to be simpler and easier to find things you're interested in reading. But we'll see how it works out. The gig doesn't pay much - few freelance writing gigs do - but it does pay real moola now as opposed to their "Gather dollars", and the exposure may be good, especially since I can cross-advertise Dreamtime, fhb, and my Amazon Dreamtime store. And heck, I even get free CDs.

And that's the Big Announcement. I was touched that several family members and friends contacted me in the hopes that XM, or NPR, or Mr. D., or somebody was tossing bags of gold my way. But Dreamtime is the best sort of writing. No pressure, no censors, no editors. Of course no money and a small audience too. :-) But I still find it fun, and at this point, having fun writing is a very important thing to me. I'm hoping the Gather gig will be fun too, but whatever happens, you'll hear about it. Promise.

We now return you to the regular blog, already in progress.