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Rails Metal
- Rails Metal is a gateway to the exciting and possibly dangerous world of Rack.
- Replace selected URLs for a speed boost.
- Bypasses the Rails router. You have to do your own routing.
- All Metal endpoints are tried before Rails routing.
Lets say in an alternate universe you are running EBay on Rails.
Your most active page is bots hitting your API to get auction status: GET /auctions/1234567.xml
Replace app/controllers/autctions_controller.rb
With app/metal/auctions_api.rb
class AuctionsApi
def self.call(Env)
url_pattern = %r{/auctions/(d+).xml}
if m = env['PATH_INFO'].match(url_pattern)
# This is a Rack return value:
[ 200, { "Content-Type" => 'text/xml" }, auction.to_xml ]
Sinatra is an extremely minimalist web framework. It works in the Rack framework. This is an entire Sinatra application:
require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'
get '/hello' do
"Hello, whirled"
Run it:
$ ruby hello.rb
# Starts up server on port 4567
$ curl http://localhost:4567/hello
Hello, whirled
Here is the alternate universe auction example with Sinatra:
class AuctionsApi < Sinatra::Application
get '/autions/:id.xml'
Auction.find params[:id].to_xml
About the Author


text:
|List Price:
|Our Price:
|Made in the USA
|Free Shipping
Talk To An Expert
Get the fit you need with Wade Sure-Fit floor mats! These floor mats are everything that you could want to protect your vehicle and more.
Utilizing a rigid core and solid surface, these Wade mats will protect your factory carpet for the long haul. A uniquely contoured surface will offer comfort and traction. Extending over the sill plate allows the liners to drain any run off and keep extra dirt, water, and mud from ruining your floor. With a limited lifetime warranty, you can rest assured these mats will be all you ever need!
Purchasing a floor mat that is going to give you not only excellent protection but also a stylish new look to your vehicle is the right move to make and Wade floor mats are sure to meet your approval! Durably constructed and digitally engineered in 3 different colors including black, grey, and tan the floor liners will complement your car or truck's needs.
These floor mats are available to fit in front, 2nd, and 3rd rows. Some vehicles even a rear cargo liner available, so with a set of Wade floor liners you can get coverage for every row in your vehicle. There may be some sill coverage depending on the year, make, model. Once you use these floor liners, you will never look at another mat the same again! Style and protect your car or truck today with the Wade Sure-Fit floor mats!
The Wade Sure-Fit floor mats are simple to install and will use the factory retention hooks or posts if available to give you the most precise fit possible. Some trimming of the mats may be required to get an exact fit. To get any questions you might have about these or any other floor mats answered, or if you need some additional information to help make a decision, please don't hesitate to give us a call.
Westin Automotive Products warrants Wade Automotive Products to be free of original defects in materials or workmanship as long as the original purchaser owns the vehicle on which it is installed. This warranty does not cover damage resulting from accident, misuse, neglect, improper installation, fire, vandalism or any form of abuse. Westin will repair or replace, its sole discretion, any product covered by this warranty. This is a parts-only warranty and such repair or replacement shall be Westin's only obligation and the customer's only remedy for a defective product. The cost of labor, installation, painting, incidental damages, shipping and handling will not be reimbursed. We do not warrant the paint or painting of our products. If, at our discretion, we choose to replace a defective part the customer (end consumer) may be responsible for any occurring freight cost, or a handling fee of up to $25.00. Westin shall have no liability for any incidental or consequential damages of any kind or nature including property damage, or personal injury resulting from the use or misuse of this product.

subset: commoncrawl


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Beef and broccoli lo mein
Makes 4 servings
Chinese lo mein noodles are made with wheat flour. The flat strands are 1/8-inch wide, or sometimes even a bit wider. Linguine and spaghettini can stand in as substitutes, however lo mein is easy to find in the Asian section of most supermarkets.
For the noodles and vegetables
8 ounces Chinese lo mein noodles
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 (16-ounce) bag broccoli cole slaw
1 cup coarsely chopped onion
1 cup sliced cremini mushrooms
For the sauce
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon white rice vinegar
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon dark (Asian) sesame oil
To complete the recipe
8 ounces beef round steak or flank steak, cut into ¼-inch strips
Cook the noodles according to package instructions.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the cole slaw mix, onion, and mushrooms. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.
While the vegetables are cooking, stir together the sauce ingredients in a small bowl.
Add the steak and garlic to the saute pan; continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes or until the steak is the desired doneness. Add the sauce and stir until evenly combined. Remove the pan from the heat.
When the noodles are done, drain well. Return them to the pasta pan, add the beef mixture, and toss.


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Video capture card
Video capture cards are used to get the picture from the cable, aerial, or satellite television source into the PC.
They decode and capture the video signal from the channel you want to view or record. Often video capture cards will include a tuner to capture an specific TV signal, and are therefore known as 'tuner cards'. (Video capture devices without tuners do exist; usually used in conjunction with an external tuner, such as HD-DVR capture devices recording content from cable or satellite STB which tunes the channel). Sometimes people mistake video capture cards with video display cards which provide the output to the (tv)screen.
Join us making your favorite media center even better than it already is today.
Analog Framebuffer Cards
These cards (also called frame grabbers and software encoders) are usually based on a chipset like the Bt848/878 or Conexant cx2388x, and decode broadcast NTSC, PAL, or Secam television. These cards deliver an unencrypted data stream to MythTV, which then encodes to MPEG-4 or RTjpeg using software encoders. Advantages of this type of card are:
- Low cost
- High flexibility -- you can choose your encoding method and employ filters prior to encoding
- If you have the CPU power, MPEG-4 produces better quality with smaller file sizes than the MPEG-2 used with most hardware encoding cards
The main disadvantage of this type of card is the high CPU requirements. Depending on your encoding settings, you may need close to 1GHz of CPU speed to handle a single encoding stream, and more if you have multiple cards or want to play back while recording. MPEG-4 is particularly demanding; for systems with weaker CPUs, RTjpeg consumes less CPU time at the cost of larger file sizes and more digital video artifacts.
Analog Hardware Encoder Cards
These cards, currently the Hauppauge PVR cards, the AVerMedia M179 and any other card which supports the V4L2 MPEG Encoder API, have a video processor on-board which compresses the tuned video signal into an RTjpeg, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 program stream before sending it into the computer. The advantages of these cards are:
- Greatly reduced load on the entire machine (with certain technical caveats). This is particularly important for machines with weak CPUs or when using multiple tuners in one system.
- The reduced load means that your video stream is less likely to suffer from encoding "hiccups" if a process causes the system to become momentarily too busy to process the video.
- Most hardware-encoding cards output an MPEG-2 stream, which can simplify backing up to DVD.
The main drawback of this type of card is that you're limited to the video format and encoding options supported by the manufacturer (usually MPEG-2). You can transcode to MPEG-4 after recording to save space, if desired, but this requires post-record processing and will degrade quality slightly.
Most cards of this type are designed to encode standard definition analog (NTSC, PAL, or SECAM) video signals. At least one product, though, the Hauppauge HD PVR, encodes analog HD output, as produced by cable or satellite TV boxes. Such a product is currently the only way to record HD content from providers that encrypt their digital data streams. (Some cable boxes have FireWire outputs, but cable operators often encrypt the IEEE-1394 output for some of the channels tuned by these boxes.)
Digital Capture Cards
There are currently several HDMI capture cards and devices available on the market, but these will not work for capturing video. Nearly any device you may wish to record HDMI from will also be using HDCP to encrypt the stream, and as such cannot be used.
An external IPTV encoder can be used to capture HDMI signals, with some limitations. IPTV_Encoders_as_a_Capture_Device
Digital Tuner Cards
Digital broadcasting for DVB, CableCARD/QAM, and ATSC is in the form of an MPEG-2 transport stream, so unlike analog capture cards, there is no need for any kind of on-board encoding engine. The required program stream is extracted and handed directly to the computer for viewing or saving. Some cards have a hardware Program ID filter (hardware pid) which means the card can extract the required program stream from the transport stream itself. In either case, the computer power required to save a MPEG-2 transport stream (but not view it) is very small, being only what is required to shift data from the PCI/USB bus and save it to disk.
Confusingly, many useful tools for working with MPEG-2 transport streams have "dvb" in their names, even though they work just as well with MPEG-2 transport streams derived from "ATSC" broadcasts.
Some digital capture cards also support analog (NTSC or PAL) transmissions, usually via a frame grabber. If your digital capture card lacks such hardware and you want to record both digital and analog transmissions, you'll need to buy a separate analog capture card - either a frame grabber or a hardware-encoding card. If your card does support multiple different modes, it will often be a hybrid tuner, rather than a full dual tuner. If that is the case, you will have to set up both inputs in the same Input Group to tell MythTV that they cannot be used at the same time.
Some cable and satellite TV boxes include FireWire ports. You can use these ports, along with a FireWire port on your MythTV box, to record both analog and digital channels from the cable box. Essentially, the FireWire card and cable box function like a digital hardware MPEG card, although configuration details and capabilities differ. Depending on your cable operator, the channels tunable via the cable box may be the same as those that are tunable via a standard digital tuner card, or you may be able to record some or all of the cable system's encrypted channels, as well.
With the world moving towards digital broadcast standards, this type of card is likely to become dominant in the next few years.


text:
Buy Lumigan online and generic Lumigan with a prescription required at Canadian pharmacy. Our generic pharmacy provides a range of generic prescription drugs and over the counter medications at highly competitive prices. For any other questions / clarifications please feel free to contact:
Email: email@example.com
Phone number: 1-866-995-7387
The generic alternative is not manufactured by the company that makes the brand product.
All prices are in US dollars.
The content on this page has been supplied to BlueSkyDrugs.com by an independent third party contracted to provide information for our website. BlueSkyDrugs relies on these third parties to create and maintain this information and cannot guarantee the medical efficacy, accuracy or reliability of the information that has been provided to us. If you require any advice or information about the drugs on this page, a medical condition or treatment advice, you should always speak to a health professional. Please note that not all products, including any referenced in this page, are shipped by our affiliated Canadian Pharmacy. We affiliate with other dispensaries that ship product to our customers from the following jurisdictions: Canada, , New Zealand, Australia, Turkey, Mauritius, India, and United Kingdom. The items in your order maybe shipped from any of the above jurisdictions. The products are sourced from various countries as well as those listed above. Rest assured, we only affiliate with our authorized dispensaries that procure product through reliable sources.
Canadian Orders are dispensed by Candrug Pharmacy which is duly licensed in the province
of British Columbia, Canada by the College of Pharmacists of BC. If you have any
questions or concerns you can contact the college at: 200-1765 West 8th Ave
Vancouver, BC V6J 5C6 Canada.
In addition to having your prescriptions dispensed from our affiliated Canadian dispensing pharmacy, your medications are also dispensed from international pharmacies and fulfillment centers that are approved by the regulatory bodies in their respective countries. Blueskydrugs.com works with fulfillment centers in a variety of countries including but not limited to Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Turkey, Mauritius, India, and the United Kingdom.
Home |
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text:
Need help? Call or WhatsApp:
The purpose of our cashback service is to help your loved ones receive cash in addition to groceries.
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text:
The services offered by the BioOptics Facility to researchers at IMP, IMBA and GMI cover analytical flow cytometry and cell sorting, as well as a large variety of microscopy techniques, image processing and analysis.
Flow Cytometry
We provide instrumentation, education and expertise for all flow cytometry requiring experiments, and offer high-speed cell sorting as well as advanced and general flow cytometry analysis. Users are given guidance and support with the planning of experiments and implementation of new fluorophore combinations. They are trained in the use of hardware and software for all of the three available state-of-the-art flow cytometers, as well as in data processing and analysis. Three cell sorters are operated by the staff of the facility to sort up to four cell populations simultaneously in bulk, or conduct single cell sorting.
If you have questions please contact facs(at)imp.ac.at.
The BioOptics Facility currently manages more than twenty microscopy systems, including wide-field microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), two-photon (2P) microscopy, total internal reflection (TIRF) microscopy, structured illumination microscopy (SIM) and lightsheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) techniques as well as automated slide scanning for samples with or without fluorescence. Most of the systems are motorized -, thus providing automation for higher throughput, - and are suitable for both fixed samples and live cell experiments. The facility provides assisted use and training on all instrumentation and consultation concerning all microscopy-related subjects, including project planning, staining, microscope selection, etc. Additionally intense basic as well as advanced practical microscopy courses are organized including hands-on sessions as well as lectures by internal and external faculty.
If you have questions or have another request please contact microscopy(at)imp.ac.at.
Image Processing and Analysis
5 state-of-the-art computer workstations are available at the BioOptics Facility, operating most of the common commercial image processing and visualization software. For the deconvolution of microscopy images, a server solution with a web-based interface has been set up in order to provide efficient, multi-user, parallel, batch deconvolution that can easily be started from the individual scientist's computer.
Users are trained in the use of specific software, depending on their demands or are trained in an annual course on image processing and analysis with lectures and hands-on sessions by the BioOptics staff. Several image analysis algorithms are available, such as object tracking and tracing, determination of measurement parameters like intensity, distance, area, volume and co-localization.
For advanced image analysis and automated object recognition, customized classification and measuring algorithms are developed within the facility.
If you have questions another request please contact image.analysis(at)imp.ac.at.


text:
In 1956 I got my first colour film for my camera.
Back then colour film was rare and expensive. I was 15, and my mother let me use her camera, a 1936 model Exakta VP single-lens reflex. It was made in Nazi Germany. It took 8 pictures 6,5 x 4 cm on 127 film, and had an f4.5 lens.
My aunt gave me a Ferraniacolor reversal film for my 15th birthday. I took a photo of my mother with our new car, which she had got about the same time.
The car was quite pleasant , and had all kinds of fashionable features that were abandoned a year or two later, but in 1956 they seemed like an advance on our previous car, a 1948 Wolseley 8. My mother was then working for an estate agent, Arthur Meikle, and was taking a client to see a house when the car suddenly swerved off the road and hit a culvert in Athol Oaklands Road. The external damage was not much, but the chassis was bent (yes, it had a separate chassis) and it was uneconomical to repair. So when she got the insurance money she went to John B. Clarke Motors in Eloff Street and bought its successor, the Wolseley 4/44.
She brought it to school to show it to me, slightly giddy from standing on the revolving platform in the showroom while the salesman explained all the advanced features of the car. There were things like a split-bench front seat and steering column gear change, which meant that you could have three people in the front seat if necessary. A year or two later I and my friends would covet cars with bucket seats and floor gear levers — just like the old Wolseley 8. It made sense, too. The workshop manual for the 4/44 showed an exploded diagram of the gear-change mechanism, with its rods and levers, with 74 separate parts, from the knob at the end of the gear lever to where it entered the gearbox. The left-hand drive model was worse, because this all had to cross over to the other side of the gearbox.
The Wolseley 4/44 was also rather under-engined. It had a 1250 cc engine, a detuned version of one that had been designed for MG TD two-seater sports cars. The MG version had twin SU carburettors, whereas the Wolseley had only one, and far more weight to lug around, especially when fully loaded. To compensate for these disadvantages, it had an elegant interior, with real walnut dashboard and real leather seats. Unlike the Wolseley 8, it had a heater though it lacked the sun roof of the Wolseley 8.
So the picture was taken when it was new and before it acquired many scratches and dents.
Then I got my mother to take some pictures of me with my horse Brassie. He was called Brassie because of his chestnut coat, and the way it shone like polished brass when the sun caught it. I hoped that the colour film might capture that.
I had been told, or read in a book somewhere, that a colour photo should always have some red in it somewhere, hence the blanket on his back. Unless I was going a long way, I usually rode Brassie bareback, as soon as I was tall enough to be able to mount him without the aid of stirrups.
The pictures were taken in winter, which is why the grass was dead and brown.
They were taken in Sunningdale. The road is now called Ridge Road, and a little way to the right it crosses what is now called Long Avenue, along which I used to walk a mile along a rutted track to Fairmount School. The track had no name back then but there was a broken down barbed-wire fence somewhere along it with a bit of flattened corrugated iron on which was painted "Pad Gesluit" (Road Closed), so that was what i called it. On the corner corner of Ridge Road and Long Avenue now stands the Yeshiva College. Back then it was vacant. The Van der Merwe's lived there in a thatched house, which bornt down one day when the paraffin stove caught fire, and they came and stayed with us for a few days.
The land behind in the picture, which was lined by pine trees on the frontage on Long Avenue and Ridge Road, used to belong to Mr & Mrs Groos, who ran a riding school and nursery school, but when the photo was taken the land was vacant and the house had been demolished. The Grooses had moved away to Bramley because their boreholes ran dry. Later their land was subdivided and houses were built there, and I think it is now called Glenhazel Extension something-or-other.
We used to live around the corner in what was later called Ridge Road, and the house is still there, though it now has a thatched roof, and when we lived in it it had a corrugated iron roof. It was a 5-acre smallholding, and we had cows and chickens and in school holidays I used to accompany my mother on delivery rounds in the old Wolseley 8. She used to deliver eggs, butter and cream to housewives in the nearby Johannesburg suburbs of Fairmount, Sydenham and Sandringham. Sunningdale was outside the Johannesburg municipal area then, and so did not have municipal light and water. At the time the photos were taken, however, we had moved to a flat in Sandringham, and the hourses were boarding with out former next door neighbours. In 1956 the place was rented by Howard Leslie, an amiable con man, who lived it up, threw wild parties to entertain the neighbours, and scarpered one night when the creditors got too hot.
Filed under: Hayes family, Hayes family history | Tagged: 1956, Ella Hayes, Glenhazel, Hayes family, Hayes family history, horses, Johannesburg, photography, Stephen Hayes, Sunningdale, the fifties | Leave a comment »


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Professional Home Inspection in Baldwyn, MS
It is absolutely crucial that you take full advantage of a home inspection for Baldwyn, MS homes. This is especially true if you are planning on buying a new house. You should definitely get any house that you are interested in buying inspected by a professional prior to putting any money down on it, because you will need to know if there are any major problems with it. Some houses have big problems with mold, radon, asbestos, flooding, and other things that you will have to be aware of before making a solid offer.
A good Baldwyn home inspection professional will be able to come through the house you are interested in and make a list of all the significant problems the house has so you will know exactly what you are getting yourself into. The last thing you want to do is purchase a house with a million things wrong with it, because you will most likely end up spending a ton of money to get them all fixed over time. If you want to make a wise investment with the house you buy, you will absolutely need to get it inspected by a local professional. You will certainly be glad you paid for these services.
AVC Costs For Home Inspection Companies($173) ($284) ($389)
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text:
Anderson Cooper talks to former FBI agent Ali Soufan about al-Awlaki's prominence on the Arabian peninsula.
Anderson Cooper goes beyond the headlines to tell stories from many points of view, so you can make up your own mind about the news. Tune in weeknights at 8 and 10 ET on CNN.
Questions or comments? Send an email
Want to know more? Go behind the scenes with AC361°


text:
5 Cozy furnished porch ideas
Winter is a funny time to be blogging about porches, eh? You know, maybe not. For people who have enclosed porches, winter is a perfectly fine time to cozy up in the semi-outdoors.
A favorite old teacher of mine has an exquisitely furnished enclosed porch, complete with storm windows that get switched out for screens in the summer, a loveseat and an arm chair, tables, and all manner of funky rural memorabilia tacked up to the walls. In the winter, she and her guests curl up in blankets while they drink hot tea out there. That porch is truly a masterpiece, and it wasn't created by some high end design-build group; just a regular person with some aesthetic sense.
You too can enjoy a cozy porch in the wintertime. Obviously, a screened in porch where you can switch out the screens for storm windows would be best. If you want to decorate a porch that is open to the elements, I can't exactly endorse it as a comfortable place to sit, though you might enjoy looking out at it when your couch and throw blankets are not covered in snow.
1. Treat it like a room: The arrangement of furniture on an enclosed porch should be similar to that of a living room. Create a distinct conversation area, and if there is room create a separate dining area.
2. Fire it up: Your patio, of course, is not well-insulated. Still, it's nice and cozy to fire up a wood stove or fireplace when you are sitting out there in the winter. Bonus: Learn how to build the perfect wood stove fire from Minneapolis heating expert Woodland Stoves & Fireplaces.
3. Stain the concrete patio floor to look like tile: Your plain concrete porch floor could look a lot more like an indoor floor with the help of a skilled concrete contractor.
4. Add warm, cozy fabrics: Warm, wooly throw blankets and throw pillows will make your enclosed patio feel like a fuzzy, yummy haven.
5. Mix vintage and modern furnishings: Mixing up contemporary furniture and down-home vintage accessories is a fun way to keep the look of your enclosed porch warm, but tailored.
Chaya Kurtz writes for Networx.com.


text:
site map | consular forms | contact us
7 images
Ten Philippine Missions throughout the US offer consular services. Each Mission covers a specific geographic region. To find out which Mission can assist you, what the hours of operation are and how to reach it please use our interactive Consulate Finder.


text:
An English advertising executive in Australia discovers that – surprise – caring for his children is harder than he thought
Fat, Forty, and Fired: One Man's Frank, Funny and Inspiring Account of Leaving His Job and Finding His Life. By Nigel Marsh. Andrews McMeel, 288 pp., $19.95.
By Janice Harayda
A couple of decades ago, American newspapers regularly published articles by men who had decided to stay home with their children and realized – to their amazement – that the work their wives did was actually hard. These gee-whiz accounts became a journalistic cliché fast enough that they have pretty well played themselves out here.
But apparently the trend still has life in Australia, where Nigel Marsh's memoir of nine months at home with his family earned him spot next to Dan Brown and John Grisham on the bestseller lists. Not that Marsh signed on for the project as willingly as some of those former American "househusbands" who have since been recast as "stay-at-home dads." Born and raised in England, he was the CEO of an advertising agency when a merger left him jobless. Instead of going right back to work, he decided that he wanted to stop being "a bit player in my own family" and spend more time with his wife, Kate, and four children under the age of 9.
Fat, Forty, and Fired is a breezy account of this experience that reads at times like a book fished out of an American time capsule from the 1980s, or a treatment for an offbeat Australian version of The Simple Life with the author alternately playing the roles of Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie and one of their hosts. Marsh pats himself on the back when his stint as a school cafeteria volunteer goes well, and he's irritated when his wife doesn't "thank" him for dressing his twin daughters. Fortunately, Kate sets him straight quickly: "Why should I thank you when you do the basic things that you should be doing anyway?" And his book becomes more interesting as he flings himself other goals – to lose 30 pounds, train for an ocean swimming race, and conquer the alcoholism that he'd been denying even while knocking back six beers a night after work.
By the end of the nine months, Marsh has achieved several of his aims. But his hope of achieving "a more balanced life" is another matter. Recidivism sets in almost as soon as he takes a new job as CEO of Leo Burnett Australia. And he concludes that all the books and articles that tell men how to achieve "work-life balance" are not only misguided but part of the problem, because men can't "have it all" any more than women can. That may be true, you have the sense that he's known that all along. So what did he really gain from his experience?
In his time off, he quit drinking, lost weight and had many lyrical moments with his children, who play amusing and at times poignant roles in the book. And such gains, he suggests, were enough. "I may be struggling," he admits, "but the struggle is slightly more enjoyable less damaging to those around me than it was a year ago."
Best line: One of the strongest chapters deals with how people reacted after learning that Marsh had quit drinking. One group insisted bizarrely that he'd never had a problem with alcohol: "I was somehow offending these people's sense of what a 'real' drunk's story should be. I wasn't a professional drunk – I was merely third division. Pathetic. My life hadn't gone off the rails enough for them. If only I could have an affair, lose my job, or maim someone in an accident, I'd be a first-class guy. It just didn't impress these people that I stopped before a dramatic disaster befell me."
Worst line: Marsh's treatment of most subjects is skin deep and sinks into psychobabble when he tries to sum up what he learned from his time off. He says the hiatus "started me on a personal journey" and that "I'm basically working on the habit of counting my blessings, not whining about the challenges."
Reading group guide: A readers' guide to Fat, Forty, and Fired was posted, before this review, on May 17, 2007, and is archived in the Totally Authorized Reading Group Guides category. This is guide is not just for book clubs but is also for individual readers who would like to learn more about the book.
Caveat lector: This review was based on the advance readers' edition. Some material in the finished book may differ.
Published: April 2007
Links: www.fatfortyandfired.com
© 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.


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If you buy a perpetual retail license for Office 2013, it will be locked to the computer you first install it on, forever. Buy a new PC and you won't be allowed to install your existing copy of Office on it, even if you wipe the disk of the old PC. You'll have to splurge for a new one.
This is a change in policy from Office 2010. Office 2010 permitted a transition from one PC to a new one. It's not, however, an entirely new policy: OEM pre-installed versions of Office (and Windows) are similarly tied to their (OEM) hardware and can't migrate. Adam Turner at The Age first pressed Microsoft for clarification over what its "single PC" constraint actually meant, and he noted the newly aligned OEM and retail licenses.
It's difficult to see the wisdom in this change. It's not a big change, but it's not a nice one, either.
Retail sales make up a minority of the Office business. Microsoft doesn't habitually report the exact level of retail sales, but we can perhaps make estimates based on the information the company does provide.
The Microsoft Business Division (MBD), the reporting group within the company that includes Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Dynamics, and Lync, reported last quarter that 60 percent of its revenue is from multi-year subscriptions—Software Assurance plans. The remaining 40 percent is what Microsoft calls "transactional;" one-off purchases, encompassing both OEM preinstalls and boxed copies bought online or in bricks-and-mortar stores.
The company's 2012 annual report also has some useful information. The report says that in its 2012 financial year, 80 percent of its sales were to businesses, 20 percent to consumers. A reasonable inference is that business sales include essentially all of the multi-year revenue (as it is only this year that Microsoft offered a consumer-oriented subscription, Office 365 Home Premium), and about half of the transactional revenue.
In the annual report, Microsoft also emphasizes that while the 80 percent of business revenue is relatively consistent, driven primarily by the number of information workers, the 20 percent is much more dependent on the broader level of PC sales and product launches. This in turn suggests that a significant proportion of it is made up of OEM sales, for which there's been no relevant licensing change.
One final data point: Windows division reports that around 75-80 percent of its revenue comes from OEM sales.
Even optimistically, retail revenue is unlikely to account for more than 20 percent of MBD revenue, and it might be a lot less. If MBD's transactional revenue has the same level of OEM sales as Windows, it would mean that retail sales were no more than 10 percent of revenue. It's a nice business, but it's not Microsoft's major money-maker, and it's not representative of the majority of Office customers.
It's spectacularly unlikely that this licensing change is going to increase that revenue in any meaningful way. It's also unlikely to make any material difference to many people. The only people who would be impacted are those who migrate software between systems, and while that's common among enthusiasts, it's probably not mainstream: the mainstream solution is to buy an OEM preinstall license, or buy retail Office alongside a new PC, use that PC for 5 years (or more) until it no longer works, then throw it away and repeat the process.
Transplanting software from one machine to another (or invoking Ship of Theseus-like questions over when an upgraded PC becomes a new one) is something for enthusiasts—perhaps explaining why the OEM license restrictions have for the most part been shrugged off—and even if Microsoft managed to generate some extra sales to those enthusiasts, it's never going to amount to very much.
But that is arguably missing the point. The software giant is penalizing a small, typically vocal group of users and provoking many column inches of complaint. This is a change that looks bad. It makes Microsoft appear petty and small-minded, determined to wring every last dollar from its customer base. And while that may in fact be the case, doing so in such a brazen manner does nothing more than get people's backs up.
The underlying reason for the change is almost certainly not any direct revenue generated by additional sales. Rather, it's yet another incentive to buy an Office 365 Home Premium subscription. The $99 a year subscription lets you use Office 2013 on up to five PCs, and those licenses float; you can decommission old PCs and move licenses to new ones as necessary. That's the carrot; the stick is the price hike and additional restrictions on perpetual licenses.
The problem is that there are plenty of customers who reject the subscription model out of hand, either because they find an overt rental model offensive or because they don't place much value in having the current version of the software and hence find occasional perpetual licenses to be more cost effective. The retail license change doesn't fundamentally alter that calculus for those users. It just makes clear that Microsoft doesn't really like such users.
So they probably won't flock to Office 365. What they might well do instead is download LibreOffice 4 or switch to Google Docs—moves that hurt Microsoft far more than simply moving an Office install from an old computer to a new one. Those enthusiasts could take the mass market with them. It's happened before, with Firefox and Chrome. It can happen again to Office. Licensing changes that alienate users make that only more likely to happen.


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June 8, 2010
Crime Magazine's Review of True-Crime Books
When international playboy Joran van der Sloot was arrested in Peru and confessed within days to the brutal slaying of Stephany Flores, the first thing that popped into countless crimewatchers' minds was that Flores wasn't the first woman he had killed — nor, had he remained free, would she be the last. The wheels of justice are as yet to reveal more about this story, but our grim thoughts spring from what might be the first and foremost fact of crime, which is this: History repeats itself. The same criminals commit the same types of crimes again and again, doing the same thing to the same type of victim in the same type of scene. I suspect that this is what we'll learn about van der Sloot. But, as the books reviewed in this column reveal, history also repeats itself in the sense that some types of crime seem intrinsic to human character, impervious to cultural evolution, raised consciousness, or anything else. Sex-killers and drug dealers and kidnappers made headlines in our great-grandparents' era and are still doing so today; all that has changed are the styles of the jackets and shoes they wear.
by Anneli Rufus
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan: by Jane Adelstein (Pantheon, 2009): A Midwesterner who went to Japan at age 19 seeking Buddhist-style tranquility, Adelstein attended Sophia University and became so skilled at speaking and writing Japanese that he netted a prestigious post as crime reporter for the popular Yomiuri Shinbun. This engagingly self-aware — if often self-deprecatory — narrative exposes a dark underworld behind the sushi bars and bullet trains. Adelstein offers an insider's perspective on the Lucie Blackman murder case, among others, and recounts in grim but lucid prose his ever-deeper entanglements with yakuza gangsters.
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease, by John Heidenry (St. Martin's, 2010): Like all child-abduction cases, this is the tragic tale of an innocent victim picked because he was so vulnerable. In 1953, 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease was kidnapped by a couple who asked his Kansas City car-dealer father for $600,000 in ransom. Although this was paid, the boy had been killed within an hour of his abduction. Longtime journalist Heidenry competently traces a complex web of wrongdoers including mobsters, cops, and the kidnappers themselves. Before her execution, the convicted woman wrote to the victim's parents: "I never realized that Bobby would be such a sweet child until it was too late."
Most Wanted Killer, by Robert Scott (Pinnacle, 2010): Featured numerous times on America's Most Wanted, Jesse James Hollywood was an aggressive drug dealer who grew up in a chichi Los Angeles suburb and already owned a home and fancy car by age 19. With his always-expansive research and eye for poignant detail, the prolific Scott recounts how Hollywood led a team of underlings to abduct and slay an innocent 15-year-old — the brother of a fellow dealer who owed Hollywood money. After this murder, Hollywood fled the country. Living luxuriously in Brazil as a fugitive topping the FBI's Most Wanted list, he was the classically heartless, handsome criminal.
Original Gangster: The Real Life Story of One of America's Most Notorious Drug Lords, by Frank Lucas with Aliya S. King (St. Martin's, 2010): For decades, Lucas was one of New York City's most powerful drug lords — having forged a plan in 1968 with African American soldiers in Vietnam to ship heroin to the U.S. in fake coffins modeled on military ones. The blithely recounted lush life of a crime boss accustomed to earning $1 million a day can't help but inspire sorrow and anger for the countless addicts whose lives were ruined (and no doubt ended) by this former megadealer who is "currently living a quiet, retired life" and is involved in "art projects."
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, by Wes Moore (Random House, 2010): A Rhodes Scholar and decorated combat veteran who served in Afghanistan with the elite First Brigade of the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division, the author was startled to learn of another Wes Moore his age who, like himself, had grown up with a single mother in Baltimore but is a convicted killer serving a life sentence in prison. In this intriguing double memoir, the author interweaves his own history with that of the other Moore, whom he visited in prison many times, and whose role in a jewelry-store robbery led to the slaying of the store's security guard, an off-duty police officer.
A Poisoned Passion, by Diane Fanning (St. Martin's, 2009): In this account of a Texas veterinarian convicted of injecting her war-hero husband with animal painkillers and dumping his body in a pond, Edgar Award finalist Fanning displays her knack for exposing the weird underbelly of intimate relationships gone horribly awry. At 24, Michael Severance had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a one-night-stand with then-stranger Wendi Davidson resulted in pregnancy, a very short marriage, and murder. Transcripts of taped Davidson-family dialogues are especially eerie.
DNA Crime Investigations: Solving Murder and Serious Crime Through DNA and Modern Forensics, by Stephen Wade (Pen & Sword/Wharncliffe, 2009): Joining older crime-investigation methods including fingerprint retrieval and handwriting analysis, "DNA has proved to be the ultimate dispenser of certainty," asserts crime historian Wade in this very thorough collection of cases on both sides of the Atlantic that have been solved with the help of this marvelous milestone. These many cases include that of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed, who was abducted, raped, and slain in a small British town in 1975; her accused killer served 16 years in jail before DNA revealed her real killer, a comic-shop owner, in 2007.
A Date with Death, by Michele R. McPhee (St. Martin's, 2010): As a brilliant 23-year-old medical student whose planned wedding to a wealthy, attractive, and adoring fiancée lay just four months away, Philip Markoff literally had everything going for him on April 14, 2009. By the end of that month, as revealed in this no-nonsense blow-by-blow, Markoff had attempted suicide twice, both times unsuccessfully, while under arrest for the brutal murder of Julia Brissman, a masseuse he'd hired via Craigslist. Focusing on this case allows McPhee to expand chillingly on the growing field of Internet-facilitated crime.


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Why should my home washer talk to my grill?
MADISON, Wis. — At the risk of sounding a bit curmudgeonly, I have to confess one thing. While there's certainly something positive to be said about the Internet of Things (IoT), I can't help feeling suspicious, weary, and a bit turned off by the whole idea.
Aside from big-number projections (e.g., Cisco predicts 50 billion IoT devices by 2020), which would tempt anyone into becoming an IoT cheerleader, I haven't seen a single credible-use scenario that might lure the average consumer onto the IoT bandwagon.
Honestly, it creeps me out to think about my devices at home talking to one another, doing stuff without my involvement, and talking about my habits — good and bad — to total strangers (advertisers, service providers, or just more machines), behind my back. There's nothing warm and fuzzy about this. At all.
Smart LED lightbulbs hacked
I'm sure you've all heard about an incident, reported last week, in which smart LED lightbulbs leaked WiFi passwords.
This is a classic case that hearkens back to Asimov or 2001: A Space Odyssey . Once empowered by its network connection, the "smart device" — in this case, a lowly light bulb — outsmarts its human "host" and starts doing things nobody ever asked it to do.
Security experts at Context Security have released details on how easy it is to hack network-enabled LED light bulbs, showing how hackers could eventually turn the lights off and on remotely.
The way an LIFX light bulb, used by Context Security for this demo, is set up sounds all too familiar. The master bulb receives commands from a smartphone application and broadcasts to all the other bulbs over a wireless mesh network.
(Source: Context Security)
The hacker was able to obtain the WiFi username, and password of the household the lights were connected to, by posing as a new bulb joining the network.
LIFX said it had updated its software since being notified of the vulnerability. But it's not far-fetched to imagine that my networked smart appliances at home could suddenly get turned on and off remotely, by a total stranger, without my knowledge.
Credible scenarios?
With this in mind, I've started asking industry sources for credible scenarios under which IoT devices improve my life by talking to each other. Readers are welcome to chime in below. Give me your best shot. Convince me why my washing machine needs to strike up a conversation with my gas grill.
Bill Morelli, associate director at IHS Technology, shared with me some use cases that have been presented to him by vendors.
- Room lights automatically get adjusted, sensing that I am watching a movie on a large-screen TV in a living room.
- Somebody rings a door bell when my baby is asleep. The bell, however, is set up to flash the room lights instead of ringing, leaving the baby undisturbed.
- If I accidentally leave my car's headlights on when I come home late at night, a sensor in the garage automatically messages my smartphone, which, in turn, sends me an alert SMS.
- Similarly, if I left the iron on when I left home, I get an alert on my smartphone.
Early in June at its Worldwide Developers' Conference, Apple unveiled what the company calls HomeKit, which reportedly helps users create and set up a specific "scene."
- Users can put the home network into "night mode" so that lighting throughout the home can be turned off and all locks turned on.
- When "vacation mode" kicks in, lighting goes on and off randomly, sprinklers follow a schedule, and the motion sensor system is triggered.
Maybe there are brilliant ideas I haven't heard before. But come on, guys. Is this the best you can do to talk consumers into IoT nirvana? These scenarios are straight out of the old home-automation catalogue. They've been shopped around and recycled for years.
Richard Doherty, research director of the Envisioneering Group, however, has a slightly different take on credible home-front IoT ideas.
- Even today, in many countries, there are attractive discounts for starting dishwashers during non-peak hours. In many areas, ensuring that your microwave, refrigerator, and washing machine motors do not activate simultaneously enhances longer appliance life while preventing blown fuses and tripped circuit breakers.
- IoT will need "peace of mind" allowances. For example, IoT could let us know if Grandma opened the fridge this morning or used her Bluetooth toothbrush.
- IoT will also create insurance access. Did Rick walk his requisite one mile a day to earn his present insurance discount?
- IoT offers public services. Are enabled air conditioners being throttled back 10% for brownout prevention?
To read more and to leave a comment, go to "IoT for infrastructure."


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@StateFarm #HRDerby on ESPN Also Sees Increase in TV Ratings, Viewership
Major League Baseball's first-ever "Social Media Derby" successfully integrated social media into Monday's State Farm Home Run Derby (@StateFarm #HRDerby), resulting in a significant volume of online activity, considerable increases in Twitter followings for the participating MLB All-Stars, as well as increased television ratings and viewership for the event on ESPN.
For the first time ever on Monday, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association arranged to have players on the field interact with fans via social media during the @StateFarm #HRDerby, which was won by Robinson Cano of the Yankees (@RobinsonCano). In addition, video and picture content shot by players during the event were distributed across social media and posted to MLB.com, marking the first time MLB players communicated directly with fans via social media platforms while on the field during an MLB event.
The 23 All-Stars who actively tweeted from the field during the @StateFarm #HRDerby gained a combined 121,428 new followers over an 18-hour period (9am ET Monday – 9am ET Tuesday), an average increase of +17%. Leading the way was Robinson Cano (@RobinsonCano), whose Twitter following increased by 84% during that time period, followed by Jose Bautista (@JoeyBats19, +49%), Gio Gonzalez (@GioGonzalez47, +46%), Matt Kemp (@TheRealMattKemp, +43%), Howie Kendrick (@HKendrick47, +28%), Heath Bell (@HeathBell21, +18%) and David Ortiz (@davidortiz, +17%). The 23 All-Stars sent a combined 223 tweets during the #HRDerby which generated more than 18,000 @ mentions back to their accounts.
In addition, the MLB and Club Facebook and Twitter accounts gained a combined 52,375 new fans/followers in that same 18 hour period, with the MLB Facebook account generating +190% more "likes" than a typical day, and the @BlueJays (+185%), @Yankees (+174%) and @Phillies (+131%) all gaining more than double their daily average. Overall, there was a combined +70% increase in followers to the MLB & Club Twitter accounts over the daily averages for the past month.
During the event, fans sent more than 100,000 tweets using the #HRDerby and #HomeRunDerby hashtags, driving both to be among the worldwide trending topics during the event. In addition, Robinson Cano and runner-up Adrian Gonzalez were also among the top trending topics in the U.S. during the finals. In all, there were more than 23,000 Twitter conversations about @RobinsonCano.
Last night's telecast of the State Farm Home Run Derby on ESPN registered a 4.7 household rating and drew an average audience of 6,686,000 viewers according to Fast National data from the Nielsen Company, up +2% and +4%, respectively, over the 2010 event in Anaheim. The 6,686,000 viewers for last night's State Farm Home Run Derby telecast stands as the most viewed telecast on ESPN since late May.
Boston, which delivered a 10.3 HH rating (up +7% over last year) and Milwaukee, which posted a 9.3 HH rating (+11%), and which both had two competitors in last night's contest, were the top rated local markets. New York, home of last night's State Farm Home Run Derby winner, recorded a 6.1 HH rating (+2% over last year).
State Farm and Major League Baseball donated $603,000 to charities through the State Farm Home Run Derby, including $428,000 to Boys & Girls Clubs of America and $150,000 to the David Ortiz Children's Fund, due to the Ortiz-led American League winning the overall team competition.


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This is an old revision of the document!
Install the following via macports:
Install the following via pkg:
wget http://download.aircrack-ng.org/aircrack-ng-1.2-rc4.tar.gz tar -zxvf aircrack-ng-1.2-rc4.tar.gz cd aircrack-ng-1.2-rc4 make make install
Simply append 'sqlite=true' parameter to make and make install:
make sqlite=true make sqlite=true install
Airodump-ng can match SSID with a regular expression when compiled with PCRE:
make pcre=true make pcre=true install
It can be compiled either with XCode 7+ or with macports
gmake macport=true sqlite=true experimental=true pcre=true
gmake xcode=true sqlite=true experimental=true pcre=true
make airpcap=true make airpcap=true install
Commands are exactly the same as Linux but instead of make, use gmake (or CC=gcc5 or any other installed gcc version).
Note: Compilation parameters can also be used with the sources from our subversion repository.
svn co http://svn.aircrack-ng.org/trunk/ aircrack-ng cd aircrack-ng make make install
http://nightly.aircrack-ng.org/ contains a nightly tarball from each day. This is handy if you don't have access to SVN (subversion). Just download and build per building the current version instructions. Optionally you can enable the extra features with "sqlite=true" and "experimental=true" per above.
wget http://download.aircrack-ng.org/aircrack-ng-0.9.3.tar.gz tar -zxvf aircrack-ng-0.9.3.tar.gz cd aircrack-ng-0.9.3 make make install
After you do "make install" then try to use any of the Aircrack-ng suite commands, you get the error message "command not found" or similar. Your system will look for the Aircrack-ng commands in the directories defined by the PATH command.
Normally, the Aircrack-ng suite programs and man pages are placed in:
/usr/local/bin /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/man
On your system, to determine which directories have the Aircrack-ng programs enter the following. If using "locate" be sure to first run "updatedb".
locate aircrack-ng locate airmon-ng
find / -name aircrack-ng find / -name airmon-ng
Once you know the directories (exclude the source directories) then determine which directories are in your PATH. To see which directories are included in PATH on your particular system enter:
echo $PATH
It should show something like:
At this point compare the actual locations with the directories in your PATH. If the directories are missing from your PATH then you have a few options:
http://www.linuxheadquarters.com/howto/basic/path.shtml http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-print-path-variable/ http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/prepostpath.htm http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/l/blnewbie3_1_4.htm
On Debian-based distros, if you get something similar to:
/bin/sh: line 0: cd: /lib/modules/2.6.15-28-amd64-generic/build: No such file or directory Makefile.inc:66: *** /lib/modules/2.6.15-28-amd64-generic/build is missing, please set KERNELPATH. Stop.
The build directory gets installed together with the kernel headers, so either you lack the correct headers or your KERNELPATH is wrong. Please check that `uname -r` returns "2.6.15-28-amd64-generic".
Do a "sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`" or just "sudo apt-get install linux-headers".
If uname returns exactly that string and the current headers are installed, the remove the headers and install them again. Also check /usr/src for installed header files, maybe it got mixed up for whatever reason.
In the above examples, needless to say, change "2.6.15-28-amd64-generic" to whatever you are running.
If you get something similar to:
crypto.h:12:26: error: openssl/hmac.h: No such file or directory crypto.h:13:25: error: openssl/sha.h: No such file or directory crypto.h:15:25: error: openssl/rc4.h: No such file or directory crypto.h:16:25: error: openssl/aes.h: No such file or directory
Solution: You are missing the OpenSSL development package. Depending on the distribution, download and install openssl-devel or libssl-devel (libssl-dev /Ubuntu/). Or worst case, install it from source: http://www.openssl.org.
If you get something similar to:
wesside-ng.c:54:18: error: zlib.h: No such file or directory
Solution: You are missing the zlib development package. Depending on the distribution, download and install zlib-devel. Or worst case, install it from source: http://www.zlib.net.
You get something similar to:
radiotap-parser.h:29: error: conflicting types for '__le64' /usr/include/linux/types.h:158: error: previous declaration of '__le64' was here
See this thread for a solution.
Open your package manager and install 'Aircrack-ng' package. Be sure to check that the version offered is up-to-date – you may see problems with older versions, especially if you have a card for which support was added recently, e.g. ACX, Broadcom or Intel. Ubuntu and Debian are particularly problematic in this matter.
The Windows version of the Aircrack-ng suite does not have an install program. You must manually install (unzipping archive) the software.
Here are the steps to follow for Windows XP:
Prior to using the software, make sure to install the drivers for your particular wireless card. See this link for the instructions.
To now use the Aircrack-ng suite, start Windows Explorer and double click on Aircrack-ng GUI.exe inside "bin" subdirectory. The GUI requires .NET Framework 2.0 to run (.NET Frameworks 1.0/1.1 are not able to run this executable, 2.0 or better MUST be installed).
Alternatively, open a command prompt (Start menu → Execute → cmd.exe) and change to the "C:\aircrack-ng-0.9-win\bin" directory and execute the individual commands.
Important notes:
Important note: airodump-ng and aireplay-ng will not work under OSX natively. Which means, injection and capture will have to use other means. If you have an intel Mac (any recent-ish Mac is), check out the VMware Fusion option which is mentioned lower on this page.
The simplest and easiest way to install on Mac OS X is via Macports. You simply do "sudo port install aircrack-ng".
Alternatively, use the following instructions:
Optional is openssl-dev and sqlite3 which can be installed through fink
See this thread for instructions on installing and using the Aircrack-ng suite on OpenBSD.
Important Note: Virtualization solutions (VMware/VirtualBox/Virtual PC/…) only work with USB cards. Card that are PCI/MiniPCI/PCMCIA/CardBus/Express Card/PCI Express/PCI-X/MiniPCI Express won't work at all.
Important note: VMWare Workstation 6.5 (and maybe Player 2.5 too) is known not to work correctly with rtl8187 driver. It uses the whole CPU and it seems to be hanging (it is really slow) for an unknown reason.
On VMware Player, the device should be shown in the title bar, click on it to activate it. On VMware Workstation, use menu "VM –> Removable devices –> USB" and then select the device:
It will automatically unplug the device from Windows and attach it to the virtual machine.


text:
'20 Feet From' The Spotlight, There's Singing Worthy Of One
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. In the now-classic Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter," the backup vocalist singing rape, murder, it's just a shot away, is Merry Clayton. In concert when Ray Charles sang tell me what I say, Merry Clayton sang the echo as one of the Raelettes. She's sung backup for many famous performers, but now she's in the forefront of a new documentary about backup singers called "20 Feet from Stardom."
Merry Clayton is my guest, along with the film's director, Morgan Neville. The movie profiles several backup singers who have great voices but have never become major stars, singers who've worked with Sam Cooke, David Bowie, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. Let's start with "Gimme Shelter," which you've probably heard hundreds of times. But this time when you listen, listen for Merry Clayton.
ROLLING STONES: (Singing) Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away. Rape, murder, yeah, it's just a shot away. Rape, murder. It's just a shot away, it's just a shot away, away.
GROSS: Morgan Neville, Merry Clayton, welcome to FRESH AIR. Morgan Neville, you were commissioned to do this movie by its producer, the late Gil Friesen. What led you to Merry Clayton?
MORGAN NEVILLE: Merry's kind of a legend in the business. She is a legend in the business. And Merry, in the backup world, you know, she was always a little set apart because she has such chops. She sang with everybody. And, you know, as soon as we - I met Merry, you know, she just blew my socks off. You know, she had incredible stories, and I remember, Merry, when I met you, we were talking about that kind of joke about being able to sing the phone book.
NEVILLE: And you actually did, and it actually blew my mind.
GROSS: Can I hear what that sounds like?
MERRY CLAYTON: (Singing) Twelve-oh-two Talamacas(ph) in New Orleans, Louisiana.
GROSS: No one's going to come at me and say that was my address she just sang.
CLAYTON: That was my address in New Orleans.
GROSS: Oh wow, OK. So when Morgan Neville says, Merry Clayton, that you sang with everybody, give us a list of some of the everybody.
CLAYTON: Let me start. I started with Bobby Darin. He signed me to Capitol when I was 15. I was 14, getting ready to be 15. Then the next encounter I had was with I think Peggy Lee. I sang background with The Blossoms with Darlene Love. And then I went to Ray Charles. And then I left Ray, and I went to Lou Adler, where I sang with Carole King, James Taylor, Neil Young, Elvis Presley, The Bee Gees. Who else? I'm drawing a blank here.
NEVILLE: You sang with The Supremes.
CLAYTON: Oh yeah, I sang with The Supremes.
NEVILLE: You sang with, of course, The Rolling Stones.
CLAYTON: Of course the Stones, the guys.
GROSS: OK, speaking of the Stones. So the track that you're probably most famous for in terms of backup singing is "Gimme Shelter," and you tell the story in the movie of how you got the call in the middle of the night to go and sing on this track. So I'd like you to tell us the story.
CLAYTON: Well, I'm at home at about 12 - I'd say about 11:30, almost 12 o'clock at night. And I'm hunkered down in my bed with my husband, very pregnant, and we got a call from a dear friend of mine and producer named...
GROSS: Jack Nicci.
CLAYTON: Jack Nicci. Jack Nicci called and said you know, Merry, are you busy? I said no, I'm in bed. He says, well, you know, there are some guys in town from England. And they need someone to come and sing a duet with them, but I can't get anybody to do it. Could you come? He said I really think this would be something good for you.
And anytime in my life that Jack would call for me to do something, it would always be - something wonderful would turn out of it, you know. There are certain producers that will call you and say you know what, this will be good for your career, and this will be good if you do this, and this will help you or whatever, and you listen. Jack was one of the guys that we would always listen to.
And then my husband takes the phone out of my hand. And he says, well, who is that? I said it's Jack Nicci. He said: Man, what is going on this time of night you're calling Merry to do a session? You know she's pregnant. And they were talking, and I turned over and just about almost went back to sleep. And as they were talking, the next thing I knew, my husband was nudging me, saying, honey, you know, you really should go and do this date.
I said, well, who are these guys?
GROSS: Did you know who The Rolling Stones were?
CLAYTON: No, I had no idea who The Rolling Stones were. I'd just come off the road with Ray Charles. I had no idea, you know, who The Rolling Stones were.
GROSS: OK, so you go to the studio...
CLAYTON: Go to the studio.
GROSS: You meet Mick Jagger, you meet Keith Richards...
CLAYTON: No, I didn't meet them. They were coming from the back of the studio. I think they had been outside. And of course the first one I meet was Keith, and he says oh, hello. I says, well, hello. Are you Merry? I said yes, I'm Merry. He says, well darling, this is what we want you to do. Go behind the booth, and...
I said, well, play the track. It's late. I'd love to get back home. So they play the track and tell me that I'm going to sing - this is what you're going to sing: Oh, children, it's just a shot away. It had the lyrics for me. I said well that's cool. So I did the first part. It was rather high, but I did the first part, and we got down to the rape, murder part.
And I said, well, what - why am I singing rape, murder?
GROSS: The line is rape, murder, it's just a shot away.
CLAYTON: It's just a shot away. And I'm saying, well, what has that got to do with the story? So they told me the gist of what the lyrics were, and I said oh, OK, that's cool. So then I had to sit on a stool because I was a little heavy in my belly. I mean, it was a sight to behold. And we got through it. And then we went in the booth to listen, and I saw them hooting and hollering while I was singing, but I didn't know what they were hooting and hollering about.
And when I got back in the booth and listened, I said ooh, that's really nice. They said, well, you want to do another? I said, well, I'll do one more, I said and then I'm going to have to say thank you and good night. I did one more, and then I did one more. So it was three times I did it, and then I was gone. The next thing I know, that's history.
GROSS: Well, let's hear - and one of the interesting things in the movie is that your singing is isolated on it, your rape, murder, it's just a shot away.
CLAYTON: Yes, uh-huh, yeah.
GROSS: So let's just hear that track.
CLAYTON: (Singing) Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away. Rape, murder, yeah, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away. Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away, away, yeah.
GROSS: That's Merry Clayton singing her part of "Gimme Shelter" with The Rolling Stones," and that track and the story behind it are included in the new movie "20 Feet From Stardom" about backup singers, and Merry Clayton is one of the singers prominently featured in the documentary. The film's director, Morgan Neville, is also with us. Your voice cracks a little but on murder. Did that bother you or anybody else, or did that seem, well, it's more authentic because when singing about this, you'd be in such an excited, you know, state that your voice would likely crack?
CLAYTON: Well, I was really in the moment, and to be honest with you, I was really - wanted to get back home, and I knew that something wonderful was going to come out of it and come out of me for it. But I didn't know that crack was going to come out like that. But I'm just - I was just grateful that the crack was in tune.
GROSS: So what does that mean financially? I assume when you're a backup singer, you get paid a fee for the recording, and whether the records sinks or becomes a big hit, you've been paid, and that's the end.
CLAYTON: You get paid for the session. At that particular time, they were paying for triple scale. I got triple scale for the date because it was late, and that's what I - that was the deal that I made. But then you go back, and you, you know, you make specific deals with producers or record companies or whatever.
NEVILLE: You do get some royalties from certain songs.
GROSS: Do you get royalties?
CLAYTON: You get royalties from certain songs that you do when you do background. It's according to the work that you put in.
GROSS: Right. Did you get royalties for this?
CLAYTON: I did.
GROSS: Oh, good for you.
GROSS: So how did the success of "Gimme Shelter" affect your career?
CLAYTON: Well, it affected my career because of the association with The Rolling Stones. Things started to look up. You know, everybody wanted me - then everybody wanted me to sing with them. Everybody wanted me to be on their sessions, not that they didn't before, but it was just more - it became more intense. That's what happened.
GROSS: You probably entered the rock world more.
CLAYTON: Absolutely. I was - I became queen diva of the background rock world.
GROSS: So suddenly you were probably in this world of, like, white rock singers who were looking for a gospel-tinged sound in their background.
CLAYTON: That's it, that's it.
GROSS: So how did you feel about that?
CLAYTON: I thought it was wonderful. I thought they made a good choice. I thought they made a marvelous choice because there's nothing like having those girls singing next to you, around you, up under you or beside you, singing with that feel because, see, what it does is it brings a spirit to the project. It's nothing in this world like gospel music at all. And when you can bring that feel into any - you can put that into any other kind of music that you're doing, it brings a specific spirit and a vibe into that music that becomes just undeniable, basically.
GROSS: Morgan Neville, you start "20 Feet from Stardom," your documentary about backup singers, with a clip of the Lou Reed hit "Walk on the Wild Side," in which he sings: And the colored girls say. And it's a kind of acknowledgement of a fact that so many white singers have used African-American backup singers, you know, in their recordings and in their shows. So can you - in fact, let's just hear that part of the Lou Reed song right here for people who aren't familiar with it.
LOU REED: (Singing) I said hey, honey, take a walk on the wild side, and the colored girls say doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMEN: Doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, do, doo, do, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
GROSS: OK, Morgan Neville, why did you want to open your documentary about backup singers with that song, and what does Lou Reed's acknowledgement there mean to you?
NEVILLE: Early on I started thinking about that song, and as soon as I did, I just had in my mind that that had to open the film, you know, because that kind of says it all. I mean, that's the kind of iconic vision we all have of the backup singers, these three African-American women in the black dresses on the side of the stage belting it out.
And, you know, whether or not Lou was being ironic about it, that's the image we all have, and that's kind of what I ended up settling on for what the film should be was kind of explaining what that experience was of bringing these black voices into all these different kinds of music, you know, rock and pop.
And that was kind of the revolution that Merry and Darlene were part of, you know, bringing the church into rock 'n' roll in a big way, you know, far beyond just soul, you know, bringing it into the heart of rock 'n' roll.
GROSS: My guests are Merry Clayton, one of the backup singers featured in the new documentary about backup singers called "20 Feet from Stardom." Also with us is the film's director, Morgan Neville. We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Morgan Neville, who directed the new documentary about backup singers called "20 Feet from Stardom," and Merry Clayton, a backup singer who is prominently featured in the movie.
Merry Clayton, your father was a minister. What was the music you grew up hearing and singing?
CLAYTON: Oh boy, I grew up hearing Sam Cooke, The Soul Stirrers, Mahalia Jackson, sitting on Mahalia Jackson's lap in my dad's church.
GROSS: What was she doing in your father's church?
CLAYTON: Well, she was visiting. She was one of my dad's friends.
GROSS: Whoa.
CLAYTON: To the point where...
GROSS: This must have been some church.
CLAYTON: It was.
GROSS: What was the church?
CLAYTON: The church was New Bethel Baptist Church.
GROSS: In New Orleans?
CLAYTON: Yeah, in New Orleans. And everybody that was anybody would come and hang in my dad's church because my dad was a singer also. My dad sung and played piano. But he was also a man of God. He was a minister. So when Sam Cooke would come in town, you know, with The Soul Stirrers at that time, he was singing gospel, they would end up at my dad's church, and it would always be a guest singer for Sunday morning.
And they would sing. Lou Rawls would come in town, and he would come to dad's church, and he would sing. Or Della Reese would come in town, who is my godmother, would come, and she would sing. And many mornings I would find myself sitting between - on a pew with Mahalia Jackson. I would lean over on Mahalia Jackson to go to sleep on my arm, and I'd put my feet up on Linda Hopkins, you know, so much so...
CLAYTON: So much so is that everything that Mahalia Jackson would sing, I would just look at her in awe and mimic everything she would sing. And then they started calling me Little Haley, you know, when I was about - I'd say about six or seven years old.
GROSS: So for you, growing up in your father's church was like growing up in the heart of show business.
CLAYTON: Absolutely.
GROSS: But on the other hand, he didn't want you to hear secular music, right?
CLAYTON: Well, my dad had no problem with me hearing secular music, nor did he have a problem with me singing secular music. It was who I sung with, who it was.
GROSS: I see, OK.
CLAYTON: My mother, my mother wanted to know who it was and what they represented and what would I be singing. You know, when I signed with Bobby Darin, who was the first gentleman to sign me to a record contract, to Capitol Records, through his T&M Music - he had a label within the label - my mother said, OK, she can do these sessions, but now this is the deal.
She, you have to pick her up after school during her - during my sixth period I had gym, so I could leave. So you pick her up after school, she goes to Mr. D's office, and he would have to - this was the deal now. He would have to correct my homework, I'd have to do my homework, and she required that I would take a nap before I could go downstairs and sing with Shorty Rogers and the big band with Mr. Darin.
GROSS: Oh that is great, that is great.
CLAYTON: Those were the requirements, yeah.
GROSS: So I'm going to play the duet that you recorded with him, and...
CLAYTON: Oh my goodness, you have that.
GROSS: Yes. Did you say you were 14 when this was recorded?
CLAYTON: Yeah, I had to be 14, yeah.
GROSS: And this was, what about 1963 or '64?
CLAYTON: Yes.
GROSS: OK. So this is the song "Who Can I Count On?" And it's Bobby Darin and my guest Mary Clayton.
CLAYTON: (Singing) Who can I count on if I can't count on you? I've never counted on you making me blue. They say you're running around with somebody new. Now who can I count on, if I can't count on you?
BOBBY DARIN: (Singing) You know, the door to happiness was almost open. Just one more step or two, you know I'd have been in there. Then all at once the vows you made were broken, and the door to happiness is closed again.
CLAYTON: (Singing) Who can I count on, if I can't count on you? There goes my happiness and here comes the blue. I can't convince myself that we're really through. Now, who can I count on if I can't count on you?
DARIN: (Singing) Who can I count on if I can't count on you?
MERRY CLAYTON AND BOBBY DARIN MUSICIANS: (Singing) Who can I count on if I can't count on you?
GROSS: So that was Bobby Darin and my guest Merry Clayton, recorded in about 1963 or '4, and that, Merry Clayton is one of the featured singers in the new documentary about backup singers, "20 Feet from Stardom," and also with us is the film's director Morgan Neville.
Merry Clayton, you sound great on that, and you're just in your early teens.
CLAYTON: I sound like a little old lady, that I've been singing 30 years at least. I mean, I don't know how that kind of stuff came out of me at that age, you know.
GROSS: How did he hear you? How did Bobby Darin hear you?
CLAYTON: I was doing background sessions with Darlene Love and The Blossoms. He kept hearing this voice that stood out, and he asked Darlene, well, who is that? She said, oh, that's just Merry. So I went in the booth, and I sung for him. And before I knew it in about six months, he had signed me to his label.
GROSS: So what were the results of being signed - and this was Capitol?
CLAYTON: Capitol Records, uh-huh.
GROSS: Yeah, what was the result of being signed to Capitol Records?
CLAYTON: Well, the results were several singles that I had, that I did for them.
GROSS: And did they do anything?
CLAYTON: They did pretty well, you know, for a 14-year-old they did pretty well.
GROSS: Right.
GROSS: Merry Clayton and Morgan Neville will be back in the second half of the show. She's one of the backup singers profiled in his new documentary "20 Feet from Stardom." Here she is singing backup on a famous Joe Cocker recording. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
JOE COCKER: (Singing) Seems I've got to have a change of scene, every night I have the strangest dream. Imprisoned by the way it could have been, left here on my own or so it seems. I've got to leave before I start to scream. Oh, someone locked the door and took the key. You're feeling alright, I'm not feeling too good myself....
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Merry Clayton, one of the backup singers featured in the new documentary about backup singers called "20 Feet from Stardom." Also with us is the film's director, Morgan Neville. Clayton is best known for singing on The Rolling Stones' recording "Gimme Shelter." When we left off, we were talking about recording with Bobby Darin when she was still in her early teens.
So let's jump ahead a little in your career. You became a Raelette - one of Ray Charles' backup singers. How did you get to be a Raelette?
CLAYTON: I got a call from my great friend Billy Preston. And Billy and I grew up in church together. We hung out together, we did shows together from kids. And he said that Ray was auditioning for Raelettes. And he really didn't say that when he called. What he said was you need to drop everything and come sing for Ray. And I said Ray who? He said Ray Charles. And I went up to the office. I song for Ray and - I'm sorry - Mr. Charles, who became my surrogate father. And when I left the office that day, I left with a contract and, you know, he wanted to talk to my mom and about me going out on tour with him.
GROSS: So I want to play one of the tracks you're featured on and this is "What I Say." And we're going to hear an excerpt of that. So it's Ray Charles with the Raelette's and when my guest Mary Clayton was one of the Raelettes.
RAY CHARLES: (Singing) Hey.
THE RAELETTES: (Singing) Ha.
CHARLES: (Singing) Ho.
RAELETTES: (Singing) Ho.
CHARLES: (Singing) He.
RAELETTES: (Singing) Ha.
CHARLES: (Singing) Ho.
RAELETTES: (Singing) Ho.
CHARLES: (Singing) He.
RAELETTES: (Singing) Ha.
CHARLES: (Singing) Ho.
RAELETTES: (Singing) Ho.
CHARLES: (Singing) You make me feel so good.
RAELETTES: (Singing) You make me feel so good.
CHARLES: (Singing) You make me feel good.
RAELETTES: (Singing) Make me feel so good.
CHARLES: (Singing) Every morning when I'm with you. You make me feel good.
RAELETTES: (Singing) Make me feel so good.
CHARLES: (Singing) You make me feel so good.
RAELETTES: (Singing) Make me feel so good.
CHARLES: (Singing) You make me feel so good.
RAELETTES: (Singing) You make me feel so good.
CHARLES: (Singing) You make me feel so good. Hey....
GROSS: So Merry Clayton, is it gratifying to do that call and response thing with Ray Charles? And you probably had to do that night after night.
CLAYTON: Oh, my god, for years. We would almost make a joke out of it. The girls say, (Singing) Hey. Hey. Ho. Ho. Ho. Hey. Hey. Ho. Hey. Ho. Ho, shake that thing. And we would laugh; we would just carry on stage and it was just, we just had fun. And that age were all just having a great time. But, that was the last song of the evening so we knew when we sung that song, we were on our way to the hotel.
CLAYTON: How were expected to dress and to move on stage?
Our choreographer was Lon Fontaine at that time. And, you know, you had to dress a certain way. Of course, Ray would dress you and he would check the dresses and make sure that they weren't...
GROSS: But he couldn't see. What does that mean that he would dress you?
CLAYTON: Oh, yes. He could see length. He could feel fabric and he knew the designs of the dresses.
GROSS: Oh, I see.
CLAYTON: And he made sure Mr. Blackwell designed all of our gowns. So you had to dress a certain way, you had to act a certain way and you have to carry yourself a certain way, and you have to smell good and you had to look good at all times because you were a Raelette.
GROSS: And what, can you describe some of your moves on stage?
CLAYTON: Well, you would have to see the moves, honey. I couldn't describe them.
GROSS: So what's it like trying to stay on pitch in a large theater? Because often on stage you can't hear very well. You need really good monitors to hear yourself well on stage. So did you sing often, where you supposed to be singing type harmonies and being in sync with the other Raelettes and with Ray Charles and with the band and you couldn't really hear?
CLAYTON: Well, this is the thing. Mr. Charles was a stickler for rehearsing. We would get to a city, get off of his plane, get on the bus with all the rest of the band, go to the hotel. They had a room set up for you to rehearse. You would rehearse three to four hours with Ray every day. So you had to know your part. There was no singing off because the harmonies were so tight. You had four voices and if one voice was off it would throw the whole harmony off, so you had to know your part, period. And far as being heard, you know, there was no working with Ray Charles without monitors and there was no such thing as you couldn't hear yourself. There was no such thing of you being out of tune. That just would never happen. Because...
GROSS: So he insisted that things would be done right, but I bet you performed with people who didn't do such a good job in making sure everything was right on stage.
CLAYTON: Well, then I had to school them and show them how it was supposed to be done.
GROSS: I'm sure they loved every second of you schooling them.
CLAYTON: I hope so. I did it with love.
GROSS: Yes.
GROSS: So probably not with Ray Charles, but with a lot of singers the backup singers are expected to add not only a great voice and maybe some choreography, but maybe a little sexuality as well. And I'm wondering if you sang with people who expected you to, you know, be very, like, sexualized onstage.
CLAYTON: I'll have to answer that question with a no. They just wanted me for my voice and what I brought to the table. Sexuality has nothing to do with it. I was always sexy. I was born like that.
CLAYTON: But - well, I was. That's the truth.
GROSS: That's what I always say.
CLAYTON: And what I brought, what I brought to the table was so wonderful. I mean, it was automatically sexy, you know what I mean? So that never really entered, I want you to be sexy. How dare you ask me to be sexy? If I'm not giving you enough and what I'm doing then maybe you need to find somebody else to be sexy.
GROSS: But you know what I mean. Like with like - and there's a clip of this in the movie with Ike and Tina Turner.
CLAYTON: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: I mean that was some very intentionally sexy stuff going on stage.
CLAYTON: But that was Ike Turner.
GROSS: Right. Yes it was.
CLAYTON: That wasn't a Ray Charles or a Joe Cocker...
GROSS: Right.
CLAYTON: ...or a Neil Young or a, you know, or a Stevie Wonder. That was Ike Turner and there's a difference...
GROSS: I get your point.
CLAYTON: ...a big, big difference. Just like he said, you know, in the documentary, you hear people say, well, you know, he wanted the girls to look, you know, a certain way, he wanted them to move a certain way. I wasn't...
GROSS: What they said specifically is he thought of himself as a pimp and...
CLAYTON: Yeah. And the girls as...
GROSS: The girls had to know they were working for him. Yeah.
CLAYTON: Yeah. Absolutely. And the girls as they H, oh, oh-oh, oh, oh, oh-oh, you know, so and that was true but I never worked with anybody like that.
NEVILLE: Well, also Merry was the queen of the studio too. I mean, you didn't tour that much because you were in so demand in the studio.
GROSS: Right.
CLAYTON: And the studio work was the best work there was.
That was the best money there was.
GROSS: My guest is Merry Clayton, one of the backup singers featured in the new documentary about backup singers called "20 Feet from Stardom." Also with us is the film's director, Morgan Neville.
We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Morgan Neville, who directed the new documentary about backup singers called "20 Feet from Stardom," and Merry Clayton, a backup singer who was prominently featured in the movie.
Morgan Neville, from having interviewed a lot of backup singers for your documentary, "20 Feet from Stardom," what have you concluded are some of the best and worst parts of being a background singer?
NEVILLE: You know, on the one hand the best part is something that the Waters told me. The Waters are kind of a legendary family of backup singers that have sung on everything for 50 years, and they said, you know, look, we're not stars but, you know, we've sung behind people that have a hit, and they have a three-year career or a five-year career and they disappear.
CLAYTON: Mm-hmm.
NEVILLE: And we have nice houses; we've raised families, and we've been doing this for 50 years, and we're getting paid to do what we love. You know, and I think if you're of that mentality, that's a pretty great thing.
And something else that so many backup singers talked about was the blend. I mean, the blend...
CLAYTON: Yeah.
NEVILLE: ...was the word that came up more than any other word.
CLAYTON: Mm-hmm.
NEVILLE: Because it's kind of the Holy Grail of backup singing. I mean, it's this moment, it's almost like a natural high, where you come together with other voices and you lose yourself completely, and a new voice emerges from all these individual voices. And just hearing all these singers talk about that experience seemed to me like something they all just loved doing.
The downsides, it can be that kind of disrespect you're given as a backup singer. You know, I don't know if anybody had the guts to disrespect Ms. Clayton here, but I heard a lot of stories about backup singers being asked to stand behind the speaker columns and sing or crouch under the stage and sing.
CLAYTON: Mmm.
NEVILLE: Of lead singer is blowing smoke in their face and refusing to put out cigarettes, of reading reviews of themselves, you know, where people say, oh, the dancers were there on stage too. And they'd say dancers? You know, we're singers. Or of being asked to go on tour and lip-synch to your backup vocal track because the show is more of a circus than a concert - you know, like a lot of big pop concerts are these days. I mean, there are some indignities that these people have to suffer through.
GROSS: Did you meet singers who felt that the people they were backing up didn't sing as well as the backup singers did?
NEVILLE: Almost always.
NEVILLE: Almost always.
CLAYTON: That's all the time.
NEVILLE: I mean, think about it. To be a backup singer, you have to walk into any situation and just be perfect from the first take to the 50th take.
CLAYTON: Kill it.
NEVILLE: And lead singers don't have to do that.
CLAYTON: No.
NEVILLE: They could screw up. So backup singers are incredibly good, which is something I honestly didn't know going into it. I thought maybe they're, you know, maybe not quite as good as a lead singer, which is why they ended up in the backup world, which is the exact opposite of the truth because they are always better with a very, very - unless you're singing with Aretha or something, you know, you're pretty much better than the lead singer.
CLAYTON: Mm-hmm.
NEVILLE: And the other thing that really surprised me - and one of these misconceptions I had going into it - was that backup singers maybe didn't have that much character to their voice, which is why they ended up in that world. That may be technically they were good but they had a very kind of bland voice. And I was quickly disabused of that notion by people like Merry.
CLAYTON: That's right.
GROSS: You don't get into this in the movie, but did some of the women backup singers tell you that they were hit on by people in the band or by the singer they were backing up?
NEVILLE: Sure. Absolutely.
CLAYTON: Of course.
NEVILLE: You know, there's a famous joke in the backup world that you could become a Raelette if you let Ray.
GROSS: Really?
CLAYTON: Could I - may I answer that please?
GROSS: Yes.
CLAYTON: I heard that rumor and many people ask me, so well, Merry, you know, you sung with Ray Charles, did you ever let Ray? I said, well, honey, there was a word that my mother taught me very on early on, and she said there was a word called no. I said and besides all of that, I was too busy letting the conductor, who I married, and was married to for 32 years until he died.
GROSS: So that was Curtis Amy?
CLAYTON: The great Curtis Amy.
GROSS: I didn't realize he had been a - he was a saxophonist, right?
CLAYTON: Yes. He was Ray conductor.
GROSS: I didn't realize he had conducted. Oh, wow.
CLAYTON: He was - we met and married from that orchestra. And Ray told him she's too young and you can't marry Sister Mary. She's just a baby. He says well, man, look, I've talk to her mom and her dad and I'm going to get engaged to her and I'm going to marry her, and he did. And...
GROSS: So he was the guy who you were laying beside when you got the call from the Rolling Stones?
CLAYTON: Absolutely.
GROSS: Oh that's a nice story. How old were you when you got married?
CLAYTON: Oh, I had to be about 22 or 23.
GROSS: Oh, that's not that young.
CLAYTON: We got married in the Astrodome in Houston, Texas when were filming "Brewster McCloud."
GROSS: No.
CLAYTON: Yes.
GROSS: OK. And the song that you sang in "Brewster McCloud" is "Lift Every Voice."
CLAYTON: "Lift Every Voice" and the title song. Uh-huh.
GROSS: Yeah. So why don't we hear "Lift Every Voice" because you sing, you know, quite magnificently on this. And this is a really stirring song.
CLAYTON: Thank you.
GROSS: This song has been called the Black national anthem.
CLAYTON: The Black national hymn. That's right.
GROSS: So what does this song mean to you?
CLAYTON: It means everything to me because it's about my people. And "Lift Every Voice" is lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven rings. Ring with harmony of liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies. Let it resound loud as the roaring sea. I mean, you know, that's Dr. King, that's my father, that's my mother, that's the voice of a people to me.
GROSS: So this is Merry Clayton from the soundtrack of the 1970 film "Brewster McCloud."
CLAYTON: (Singing) Lift every voice and sing till earth and Heaven ring. Ring with the harmony of liberty. Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
(Singing) Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Facing the rising sun, our new day has begun. Let us march on till victory is won.
(Singing) Stony the road we trod, oh bitter...
GROSS: That's Merry Clayton from the soundtrack of the 1970 film "Brewster McCloud," and simultaneous with the release of the documentary that she's featured in about backup singers "20 Feet from Stardom," is the release of a best of album, collecting her recordings called "The Best of Merry Clayton," and "Lift Every Voice" is included on that.
Merry Clayton, what would you like for your career now?
CLAYTON: Well, I'd like for people to hear that didn't hear. I'd like for the younger people to hear what they have never heard and say, my goodness, this woman can really sing. I'd like to work with Darlene on tour.
GROSS: Darlene Love?
CLAYTON: I had to work with Lisa. Yeah, Darlene Love was my mentor. She took me under her wing when I was 14, 15 years old. And she and Fanita James of The Blossoms, they just mentored me and trusted me and knew that I could do what I could do. And I'd love to tour - for Doll and I to do a tour together with Lisa and Judith and Ta-Ta. You know, Ta-Ta is out with Elton John.
Lisa is out with the Stones. And Judith is kind of hanging. So we're all kind of hanging out just doing what we do. And I'd love to just do a tour with them. I'd love to do just an album. Another album with them would be great. Another CD, rather, would be great.
GROSS: What have you been doing lately?
CLAYTON: I have been being a grandma diva.
CLAYTON: Of three beautiful children - a five-year-old, a 10-year-old, and an 11-year-old, which have been with me since they were - they've lived with me since they were five and six years old. And I've been doing that. I've been - basically been with my family. I lost my husband several years ago, and really, coming through that was a bit of a challenge for me.
But I came out of the dark a couple of years ago and it was very - it was inspiring because I know every time I open my mouth to sing, I always feel Curtis around me. And I walk around my home and I feel his spirit all around me. And I know that he's looking over this project. And we can all feel him around in everywhere we go to talk about this film.
There are friends of mine that pop up and said, oh my god, you know, Curtis would be so proud of you right now. He was always my champion and always my fan, but most of all he was my husband and the father of our children.
GROSS: Right. So you're looking for an opportunity to sing more now.
CLAYTON: Of course.
NEVILLE: And that's the thing. They still have their chops, you know, incredible...
CLAYTON: (Singing) Yes, I do.
CLAYTON: (Singing) Oh, yes I do.
GROSS: All right. Well, I wish you both really good luck and...
CLAYTON: Thank you.
NEVILLE: Thank you.
GROSS: ...thank you so much for talking with us.
NEVILLE: Thanks, Terry.
CLAYTON: It was my honor and my pleasure. Thank you so much.
GROSS: Merry Clayton is one of the backup singers featured in Morgan Neville's new documentary, "20 Feet from Stardom."
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text:
Electronic Documents of Illinois
Document IdentificationUsers should pay particular attention to version identification or dates of publication of documents retrieved. Earlier, possibly superseded, versions of documents are also stored here. Title
Property Tax Appeal Board Decision 2009-00772-R-1 Keller
- Property Tax Appeal Board Decision 2009-00772-R-1, Keller, Appellant, McLean County, Bloomington City Township
Originally Deposited as: 20220907114457
Published By:
Phone Number: Language(s): EN-English Volume or Year: 2011
Number or Issue: June Date Created: 6-24-2011
Date Last Modified: 6/24/2011 Librarian Remarks:
Access This Publication1. (2009-00772.pdf).
Document Size:84080 Software: Acrobat PDFMaker Version: 8.1 This is part of a series. It is part of Property Tax Appeal Board Decisions: 93988