My brother-in-law sent me this e. He's working hard for a great cause, thought I'd share.

 
What's up friends, family, fellow lovers of animals,

First of all, sorry if you hate mass emails. You know this isn't like me.
Second: Please read this anyways. Es muy importante.

The 2008 Walk for Farm Animals is fast approaching, and I've received the dubious honor of being the chief coordinator of New York City events. This annual event has been taking place in Central Park for nearly 10 years, and this year is gonna be the best yet.

The Walk is a fund and awareness raising event for Farm Sanctuary, the nation's leading farm animal protection organization. They do vital work sheltering and advocating for abused farm animals. Farm Sanctuary operates the two largest farm animal shelters in the nation, and they also have some amazing campaigns to eliminate the worst practices in animal agriculture. Right now, they're working hard to ensure the passage of Proposition 2 in California, which would ban several of the most cruel aspects of factory farming in the state. To learn more about this amazing organization, please see www.farmsanctuary.org.

This year's Walk, scheduled to take place on Sunday, September 28th at noon and beginning at Merchant's Gate in Columbus Circle, will include a walk around beautiful Central Park with tons of outreach opportunities, and then end back at the Circle, where there will be live music (afrobeat allstars Shokazoba and indie songstress Bess Rogers), delicious (and free!) vegan food (from the Groovy Baker), appearances by leaders in the animal protection movement (including Princess Superstar, Vegan Ironman champion Brendan Frazier, Senator Liz Kreuger and Farm Sanctuary Executive Director Jeff Lydon), and raffles for some incredible prizes. In short: this is going to be awesome.

If you are interested in walking with me, you can learn more at:
www.walkforfarmanimals.org

and registering at
www.firstgiving.com/farmsanctuary.

But here's the meat (okay, bad pun) of why I'm writing you: if you can't make it but still want to support Farm Sanctuary, it would be great if you could sponsor me by going to my donations page:
www.firstgiving.com/pigasus.
 
Thanks so much for your support! Please forward this far and wide to any animal lovers you may know!

All my love,
Cody
 

It was 27 years ago...

Around 6:30 pm August 1, 1891, we all, that the first MTV staff, crew, execs, and VJ's, climbed onto a school bus  and drove to a little restaurant in Fort Lee, New Jersey, The Loft.  A school bus. Can you imagine? This is what we all took to the MTV launch. The Loft was chosen because it was the only restaurant we could find in the NYC vicinity who's cable company was taking a chance on adding this crazy new basic cable service called MTV. 

To honor the occasion, Jordan and I packed our hour with as many of the first videos as we could, we got to number 15. It's funny 'cause out of 15 it's the second Rod Stewart video. We didn't have many videos back then to when a top artist had more than one they were in heavy rotation!

One of my favorite tracks in the hour is "Little Susie's On The Up" by PhD fronted by Scottish singer Jim Diamond. It's a steamrolling old-school (and I'm talking one-room schoolhouse!) rock track. The only copy we could find was pretty poor quality but we cleaned it up as best we could, and shortened it a bit so it wasn't excruciating, but since we did include it, we have an official first 15!

Then I got the idea to try to track down Geoff Downes, keyboard player for, not just Yes and Asia, but for the Buggles. He called me from his iPhone in England. The line is a bit rough, but it's worth it to hear him share what goes through his mind when he hears "Video Killed The Radio Star" today, and what it was like for them back then to find themselves at the epicenter of the video music revolution.

August 1st always sees a flurry of MTV staffers e-mails, and here's the one I sent out. It's pretty sappy but I'll run it by ya anyway. I should mention that this was in response to one of the crew remembering they used to have Martini's with their hamburgers at the Sam's, the diner on our little corner of Hell's Kitchen.

What??? Who was drinking Martini's???

Remember that day we had no audio everybody had to come back and do all our segments
again? It's ALL MAKING SENSE NOW!!!

I can't believe it. 27 years ago we were on the school bus, heading out to Fort
Lee NJ. Jesus. I can remember being in that dark little basement watching the  blast-off,
all of us holding our breaths, "is this really going to happen?"  It was
monumental to me, and I was a newcomer, having graduated from NYU just a few weeks before. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the crew who'd been envisioning MTV for so long.
History can't repeat a moment like that. There can be more, but that one stands
tall as one of the greats. The thing I love about it the most is the thread of togetherness
it wove through us all.

Ah, getting all sentimental out here in Malibu. Sure wish I was on 33rd and 10th for
ONE OF THOSE MARTINI'S!

xoxoxoxoxo, Quinski

You'll hear in the Bret Michaels show I ask him, "What was the last thing you shot?" In case you're wondering how I came up with such a random question, I'd read this interview in PR.com where the subject of hunting came up, and it seemed pretty interesting: 

Bret Michaels: I'm an animal freak lover!! I do not kill any animal! However I do love to shoot. I grew up as a kid in Pennsylvania learning to hunt, and I just decided for myself very early that it was not for me. I love animals and I'd rather save them then kill them.

PR.com: Especially for sport. It doesn't make any sense.

Bret Michaels: Yeah, it didn't for me. I'm like, "Hell, we got plenty of hamburger meat. Why do we have to kill this bear???" 

So he told me about his archery a la Ted Nugent, and how, though he loves to have "fun with his guns", he doesn't hunt anymore. 

Closing the hour I said, "This labor of love has been a Radiobu production."  I threw the "labor of love" phrase in because when we put together our tribute shows, that's truly what it feels like. We craft and weave and sculpt, all to present everyone in the best possible light. The featured artist, me, and all the bands who's music we're privileged to play. We call the shows our "sonic symphonies." I hope you enjoy the Bret show as much as we enjoyed making it. (btw I believe I stole that line from one of the Beatles, they said it on one of their Christmas records, referring to all the albums they'd released in the past year.) xoxoxo, Martha

p.s. It was Paul, god bless the internet. Check it out: http://www.thebeatles.com.hk/lyrics/lyrics.asp?lyTitle=Another+Beatles+Christmas+Record

Sorry you have to highlight and paste, no direct link from blog section.

p.p.s. Have you ever heard Coldplay's song, "Yellow?" My husband thinks everyone knows it but I'd never heard it. Just curious...

p.p.p.s. Miss you already! xoxoxoxo, Martha 

This weekend we're airing our special, Martha Quinn Presents...Bret Michaels. And what a great weekend to do it, he just announced he's doing Rock of Love 3!

I posted a link over in the clicks section to Joe "Def Leppard" Elliot putting down some of the Sunset Strip bands, and then you can check out Bret Michaels' response. I like it because he gets a bit gritty and emotional. That clip gave me a sense of him as  "kickin' ass and takin' names" Rockstar, more than his soft-spoken, totally together-man interviews do. I like it. Bring it on! Though I do agree with his predominantly high-road stance of not being derogatory about other people's music, and he even went on to say he liked a bunch of Def Lep tunes. That was a good touch. 

We played a few tracks from his new album, Rock My World, as well as some fave Poison tracks. I always love to hear about the brotherhood of musicians coming up through a similar time, and he shares with me a bit about Axl and Motley and Van Halen.