Maryann Price, A Lickette No Longer

I was just getting caught up on the local papers, and I spotted this article. Maryann Price is making an appearance tonight, not far from here. If I’d known sooner, I would have been interested in seeing her.

Who’s Maryann Price? She sang with Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, a string-and-vocal group I enjoyed a lot back in high school and college. That’s Maryann on the left, and Naomi Ruth Eisenberg on the right. Together they were called, respectfully and not derisively, the Lickettes.

Dan Hicks with Maryann and Naomi

Rather than try to explain them, just give a listen. In the first song, “I Feel Like Singing,” Maryann does the scat bit heard in the left channel. The second song, “I Scare Myself,” features the spine-tingling violin playing of Sid Page.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/IFeelLikeSinging.mp3,http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/IScareMyself.mp3]

Next, Maryann sings “I’m An Old Cowhand.” Can you tell I like songs with titles that start with “I”? All tracks were taken from the original vinyl disks I loved listening to 35 years ago.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/ImAnOldCowhand.mp3]

Finally, if you read the article at the link above, you know there are recent home videos of Maryann on YouTube. This one includes a bit of her doing “I’m An Old Cowhand.”

Brooks No Denial

The lame-brained Republican political commentator David Brooks is always good at raising my blood pressure, which is sometimes too low anyway. Look at this idiotic comment he made on The News Hour:

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I’ll just tell you that, in private conversations months ago, Republican senators, senior Republican senators were anxious to move away from the White House, to move towards some sort of withdrawal. Now they’re not talking that way. They’re talking, “We’ve got to stick with the president.” And why? Two words: Harry Reid.

It’s because they detest the way he’s drawn the line. He’s drawn the line that said, “You’re either for a certain withdrawal right away, or starting with 120 days or whatever, or you’re with the president.” And they hate those two choices. And they’d rather not be in those choices, but Reid is the majority leader. He sets the parameters of the choices, and that’s the dilemma they’re in.

Sheesh. Always, always the Neocon supporters, mostly now reduced to being apologists due to the undeniably total failure of the Bush administration, still insist on constructing convoluted logic that blames Democrats for everything. Yeah, it’s Harry Reid’s fault that Republican politicians can’t distance themselves from Bush. Ridiculous.

The Name is Pratt. Doug Pratt.

There’s an absolutely fascinating paper (yes, I’m being sarcastic) called “Message Format Standards,” that in 1999 was presented to the Department of Health and Human Services National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics. What’s interesting about it is that the paper was written by Doug Pratt, who happens to work at a leading competitor of the company where I’ve worked for 26 years. He’s a systems integration specialist and, well, so am I. Although to be precise about it, Doug specializes in the medical application layer, and I work below that, dealing mostly with LAN/WAN/SAN issues. Still, I think it’s a remarkable coincidence.

Eric’s Anime Pick — Ergo Proxy

Besides giant robot battles, another fave Anime theme is the hot female agent/assassin who begins to suspect she isn’t working for the good guys. (See previous post about Kurau.) Ergo Proxy is another example along these lines. So far we’ve watched it through episode 4. The series has some subtly stylized, if dark and monochromatic, artwork and an attention-holding narrative.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUL07/ErgoProxy.flv 425 240]

The theme song played over the closing credits, “Paranoid Android,” is by Radiohead, a band I featured here. The song heard during the opening is by Monral.