Barely treading water here with the blog, I’m sorry to say. Unavoidable, with Boston Marathon training underway, so I’ll do another quickie post.
Motown Records just had its 50th anniversary. Label founder Berry Gordy made a point of catching up with the Beatles in 1964 before they returned to England to film “A Hard Day’s Night.”
At the movie studio there was some overlap between the filming of “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Mary Poppins”. Here’s Paul with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.
To do a quick security check of websites you can use McAfee’s free Site Advisor. There’s a plug-in for Internet Explorer and one for Firefox, or you can enter an address at this link.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/ff.html
In June Microsoft will be ending its Live OneCare security subscription and introducing a free service, called Morro. This could, and should, be your chance to let go of the security software you use now.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/nov08/11-18NoCostSecurityPR.mspx
pret•ty (prit’ee) adj.
1. See Cheryl Holdridge
Cheryl Holdridge has died. The first time I saw her was close to fifty years ago. Annette has been ill for so long, I assumed she would leave first. And nothing against Annette, but she was a distant second to Cheryl.
Many YouTube videos have such low technical quality as to be barely watchable, so my sister Jean was impressed by an OK copy, despite being a vertically cropped version with the wrong aspect ratio, of the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night doing “If I Fell.” Here’s how it appears and sounds on YouTube…
… and here’s my own transfer, from LaserDisc, captured on a Pinnacle 500 PCI. Better?
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/JAN/IfIFell.flv 480 360]
As promised last week, here is Terry Hooper, the future husband of Prudence Bury, as the croupier in A Hard Day’s Night. When I was a kid I thought Wilfrid Brambell was an unnecessary extra bit of comic relief, but now I think he was essential to the overall success of the movie.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/JAN/TerryHooper.flv 480 360]
Go back to the very funny Men in Coats video I posted and watch the first three minutes. It’s Mambo music from Cuba. The first tune is “Mambo Jambo,” and here’s a recording of it by Prado Perez, from 1959, the year Castro took over.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JAN/MamboJambo.mp3]Great stuff! OK, now go back to the K3 New Year video and listen from 0:08 to 0:20. It’s some of the same music used by Men in Coats. See? I said you’d heard it before.
Mambo was big in the late 40’s into the 50’s, and one of its biggest names was this guy, whose studio later gave the green light to Star Trek.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JAN/ILoveLucy.mp3]