How did you cope without Mudcat

Subject: RE: How did you cope without Mudcat
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Jun 04 - 04:26 PM

O, u!

~S~

Subject: RE: How did you cope without Mudcat
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 03 Jun 04 - 04:47 PM

Burned a bunch of data onto CDs to clear off some space on my 40 gig hard drive. (Well, most of it was already backed up, but now the entire archive of a large client who hasn't spent any money with me for 6 months isn't cluttering up the drive and is all together on current archive CDs.)

Listened to a bunch of new music CDs I bought at a yardsale, as well as some I've been given recently and haven't had time to listen to.

Made a bunch of phone calls, trying to line up some stuff for Tom, who is back to work and unable to do them himself.

Cleaned out another pile of shhhhhhhh-stuff from around Tom's (almost empty) file cabinet. Threw a bunch of stuff out.

Filled the deck pots finally with dirt and, in between rain showers and hoards of hovering mosquitoes, got the nasturtiums planted as well as the first pot of salad greens. (I keep two pots alternating all summer.) Now all I have to get is a couple tomato plants. (Then Tom will rebuild the deck and I'll have to move everything.)

Oh, and while I was fighting off mosquitoes, I lopped off a bunch of small brush that's sprung up on the bank and did major surgery on the lower branches of a couple small evergreens that were encroaching on my flower bed.

And cleaned up some e-mail and did some other computer housekeeping. And emptied and filled the dishwasher. And applied for a couple jobs.

Other than that, didn't do anything except wait around for Mudcat to be back up.

Linn

Subject: RE: How did you cope without Mudcat
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Jun 04 - 06:14 PM

Entertainment. Precisely my reason, too, Marty.

Actually, there was (and still is) an amazing amount of activity here in Seattle and the surrounding area. Singers who passed through during the Fifties and Sixties were pretty surprised once they got here—and equally surprised that all the activity here seemed to be one of the best kept secrets in the country. This I was told by people such as Bob Gibson (who was here for a couple of weeks), Theodore Bikel (here for several days), and many others.

That's pretty much due to the parochial nature of big eastern cities (and "Midwest" notwithstanding, I include Chicago in that). New York invariably thinks it's the center of the universe in all things, as often does the Boston/Cambridge area, the Bay Area, and of course, Chicago. The Greater Seattle area encompasses a population of about 3,000,000, all within a short commute. Lots of otherwise fairly knowledgeable people who live east of the Rockies seem to think that Seattle is nothing but a clump of log cabins and igloos. There were several coffeehouses and clubs here that were devoted to folk music, most of which were pretty damned nice compared to some of the establishments in the rest of the country. I didn't find this out until I got to the Bay Area and learned that a lot of the famous places everybody had heard about were real pits compared to some of the places in and around Seattle where I and other Seattle area singers regularly performed. Many visiting singers from back east, both famous and not so well known, were really surprised that the folk scene here was as big as it was, and confirmed that Seattle had great venues and enthusiastic audiences, and they loved performing here and came back whenever they could.

Also, there were local performers who were as good as anyone you could hear on records, but record company A & R folks didn't know Seattle existed and even if they did, considered it too far to come, so they never bothered to check the place out. A couple of local record companies were interested only in rock—they sneered at folk music, considering it an aberration.

The thousands of performers who show up at the Northwest Folklife Festivals, and the hundreds of thousands of people who attend (see other threads) should give you an indication as to the level of activity around here. And the circumstances that led to these mob scenes started way back in the Forties and built up over a period of time. In 1963, I sang several times for audiences of up to 15,000 at the weekly "Seattle Center Hootenanny" that ran all summer.   

Yeah, I've written over 100,000 words so far (first draft) with a fair amount to go yet. But those who have read parts of it, including those from other parts of the country, tell me they want more (often saying they had no idea there was that much going on here), so I have no fear that there won't be considerable interest.

Marty, I'm assuming that your question was serious. If not, then sorry I bored you once again.

Baseball here in the Fifties and Sixties? Couldn't tell you. I was too busy singing to follow it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: How did you cope without Mudcat
From: Bearheart
Date: 03 Jun 04 - 09:39 PM

I was away for the weekend and freaked when I got home and couldn't do my Mudcat catch-up, but then I got smart and emailed Kat, who helped me find the help thingy. Since I had gobs of other stuff to catch up on (gardening, email etc) I decided to give it a rest and check in later. A minor crisis (not mine, just one I needed to help with) intervened, so I didn't have time to think about it. So glad it's back though!

Bekki

Subject: RE: How did you cope without Mudcat
From: GUEST,harp
Date: 04 Jun 04 - 12:29 AM

don't you mean...how did Mudcat cope without me? LOL

Subject: RE: How did you cope without Mudcat
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jun 04 - 02:28 AM

I got on with having a life