Random Music Thoughts

room 8.jpg

- “Room 8” ( 1947–1968 )

Room 8 was a neighborhood cat who wandered into a classroom in 1952 at Elysian Heights Elementary School in Echo Park, California. He lived in the school during the school year and then disappeared for the summer, returning when classes started again. This pattern continued without interruption until the mid-1960s.

News cameras would arrive at the school at the beginning of the year waiting for the cat's return; he became famous and would receive up to 100 letters a day addressed to him at the school. Eventually, he was featured in a documentary called Big Cat, Little Cat and a children's book, A Cat Called Room 8. Look magazine ran a three-page Room 8 feature by photographer Richard Hewett in November 1962, titled "Room 8: The School Cat". Leo Kottke wrote an instrumental called "Room 8" that was included in his 1971 album, Mudlark.

As he got older, Room 8 was injured in a cat fight and suffered from feline pneumonia, so a family near the school volunteered to take him in. The school's janitor would find him at the end of the school day and carry him across the street.

His obituary in the Los Angeles Times rivaled that of major political figures, running three columns with a photograph. The cat was so famous that his obituary ran in papers as far away as Hartford, Connecticut. The students raised the funds for his gravestone. He is buried at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, California.

 
This is an interesting article, but it has the feel of a hit piece. If there really is someone who nets €20,000 a month selling records without a physical store, I doubt that an additional 1% (40 cents on a $40 album) will make or break them.

Over on the Steve Hoffman music forums, there’s a whole thread of Discogs horror stories. I must be extraordinarily lucky, because in hundreds of transactions in all price ranges I’ve never had a problem that wasn’t immediately rectified.
 

Sure you hate these Rolling Stones lists - and yet you just might look
“I’ll just see where (insert guitarist here) fell”

:)

Rick: “must resist seeing where David Gilmour is”

I admit; I looked through the last 20 or so, and thought, "Why am I looking at this on a weekend when I have so much work to do?"

So, I will need to come back to this. Maybe hit it again when I'm 80.
 
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