| Los Angeles, CA-February 14, 2002
Planetmullins.com gets a new look,
and new wings. Rob needs a nap. Or two.
Ok. Ok. Ok. I finally took the time and at the request of so many of
you fans, redid the whole dang website. Well, not the whole thing, but
almost.
The past two weeks really tested my patience and abilities as a web
designer. And probably your patience too while you kept clicking around
to see
if there was anything new. Well, I'm happy to say that there is finally
something new. Actually, a lot new. A ton new. Here's what's new.
Just for you fans.
New CD Listening Room
One of the major complaints people have had about the CD listening room
was that they couldn't figure out what song went with what CD. There was
a ton of music up on that page, but people were having trouble figuring
out which CD to buy. Well, that problem has been fixed. Buy all of them,
duh. LOL. ahem.....
The new CD listening room has CD information galore going all the way
back to the RED SHOES CD and then forward all the way to the 2001 CD with
an individual page for each CD with tracks, song titles, song times,
audio preview files, reviews, and notes by me about each project. The listening
room itself
is the master page where all the CD covers appear (it takes awhile
to load, be patient if you are still using dial-up) with the audio links
to the songs that I felt were most important, or the biggest hits from
the radio. Not every project of my solo artist career is on there, but
there are 12 CD's of stuff there. Hopefully that will make it easier for
you all to sort through what seems to be a ton of music, even to me.
Some of your old links on the old listening room won't work, and many audio
files have been replaced with better quality ones. By the way, if
you already have the listening room bookmarked or added to your favorites,
you will have to hit reload or refresh to see the new page. Also, it is
a good idea to empty your browser cache of your web trips (this means you
julie :D) before going to the listening room as lack of browser cache space
will slow down your listening experience. Also, you will notice that some
files will pull up the real player right away, and others will create a
download of the audio file for playing at the end of the download. Since
most all the new clips are under 1 minute long, it won't take more than
30 seconds in most cases for dial up users to get the full clip into the
real player so that it will play all the way through without the standard
starts and stops that make the real player a general pain in the butt to
use. After the clip has loaded and played once, it will play with no interruptions
flawlessly if you just click the play button on the real player after the
first playback. Also, one thing I tried was to listen to one clip, and
then start loading another by clicking elsewhere on the page so that the
next clip would be through loading around the time that the first clip
ended.
About the CD order, the page does not have a chronological order to
it. I did it in the order that I thought would be important for someone
new coming to the site
for the first time.If you click on the individual CD pages, you will
find the dates the CD's were recorded. Finally the "Making Love" song that
was such a big hit can be heard on site, and maybe even more people will
stop thinking once and for all that
my hit song was by Joe Sample. LOL. Ok...on to the next new stuff...
INTRODUCING the PLANETMULLINS LIBRARY.
At long last, those of you who enjoy reading my text rants on current
events have a place to go and check out all of the various articles and
text files on planetmullins.com. The planetmullins library-an idea I've
had for years now, but never had time to create-has been born!!!! Its available
for your reading pleasure
24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You will find things at the library
organized into four sections: 1. Feature articles-here are the articles
about current events and stuff that I've done over the past couple years.
2. Interviews-here are interviews that Laura or I have done with other
people over the past couple of years as well as
my AOL Jazz Room interview with Tina Evans. A brand new to the web
interview just went up there today, and its one that first timers will
really enjoy-The Ramsey Lewis Interview. No, its not me interviewing Ramsey
Lewis, its him interviewing me. This interview was originally broadcast
on the Ramsey Lewis Show in 1993. It is in real audio format, sorry, no
text version. Ramsey caught me while I was in Chicago for a gig and had
me come on air to talk about my music, the Crusaders gig, and my song "Making
Love" becoming a Jazz Standard. Its about 9 minutes long. Hope you enjoy
it. 3.Reviews, press articles-here you can check out some of the press
articles about me over the past ten years....not everything in print about
me is online but you can get the basic high points....the Roland article
is pretty cool as well as the Yamaha one.Also, I haven't had the time to
take all the CD reviews about my music I found online and put them all
on this page, but they are on the individual CD pages. 4. Newsletter
archives-this one was really tough to put together because I really had
to search around to find a lot of the early
versions. The Bruce Willis tour page is still hugely popular with new
visitors, and newsletters date back all the way to 1997 on this page. You
can find just about anything from the past on here, or so I hope.
New ARTIST PAGE.
I put most of the recording artist stuff in this section because it
was getting to be too much to keep track of. When redo-ing my bio for 2002
I had no idea I had done so much playing with so many people for so long.
The Discography page really needed to be updated, and it is new. Now its
broken down into my solo artist recordings, and then the other stuff I
have done. The solo artist section CD titles are linked to the individual
CD pages that are in the listening room.
The LIVE SHOWS link from the artist page is new....it is broken into
two sections-cool gigs I've done in the past so that promoters and new
people can check them out...and the current gig schedule which is still
at http://planetmullins.com/gigs.The COMPOSITIONS list is a page that has
been onsite for awhile, but never linked to the artist side. It still needs
an overhaul which I will get around to eventually.
New Site Map
Here again, you will need to hit reload or refresh to see this if you
have it bookmarked. The quick start page is for people coming for the first
time or for you regs
if you need a better overview of the site and what it about. The other
areas will explain themselves.
Summary
Planetmullins should be a lot easier to navigate now that it has been
redone. The whole process took about 90 hours over the past few weeks.
I hope you enjoy
the new look and feel to the site. Thanks for making my site one of
the more popular ones on the web. To check out all the new stuff, start
with the map.
IN OTHER NEWS:
NAMM SHOW and GREG VAIL PARTIES
pull together old pals and forge new relationships.
Greg's E-Motion CD release party the last week of January gave
me a chance to invite some of my budz out to hang with us at Kikuya which
was really fun.
I don't know if they want me to say their names but the pict above
includes a bunch of the local cool piano guys, and some out of towners
that dropped by. We had a blast with they guy in the red shirt sitting
in and it was fun doing a duet with him on All The Things You Are
(Steve are you laffing yet). It was cool of Greg
to present me with a studio award from his record company that weekend
(see pict at top of page). I am really proud of how hard he is working
on his music and how far he has come. Congratuations Bro!
NAMM in Anaheim was a chance to see some old friends and make new ones.
I ran into Sal Marquez, Ben Margules (Mariah Carey), Michael Lington (great
new haircut dood), Lance Wright (where's the poker game lol), Tom K from
Kurzweil...Lloyd Trammel was at the Peavey booth with a a great new invention
that he was playing my Tokyo Nights CD through.....Dweezil Zappa and
Lisa Loeb are an item and actually looked pretty close to married during
her autograph
signing....Hans Vermullen was hanging out in the Hilton bar with "smooth
jazz Christine" and Steve Distanislaw....was nice chatting with them. Ricky
Lawson popped over to see what I was up to in the restuarant there and asked
me to do his Valentine Show at Le Ve Lee but he then called and took a
Steely Dan gig in Jamaica, so it has to be rescheduled.
Ronnie Laws at Jazz Bakery
It was so great to pop in on Ronnie Laws last Saturday night at the
Jazz Bakery and jump onstage for awhile. Ronnie is just sounding superb,
and the place was packed. Larry A and Bubba Bryant were in the band, and
it made me long to hear Ronnie's BROTHERHOOD CD which we all did together.
Bubba is back from doing the MD gig for the Backstreet Boys, but we didn't get much
chance to talk. Nice to see him though.
More "King of Queens" stuff
recorded at Much Too Loud Studio
It has been cool working on "The King of Queens" (CBS, Monday nights, 8pm
PST). I ended up with two more episodes to do since the last newsletter...Jeff Bunnel
came by and played trumpet on the Dixieland stuff, he is a great player
and good orchestrator as well. I hope the series keeps on bringing me work.
I am having a great time. Larry Antonino is working in the studio here
next week on some new music, should be fun.
Well, that's the news for now folks. Enjoy your Valentine's Day, and
your February. See you at a live gig, or at the next newsletter.
All the best,
Rob Mullins
2/13/02
LA, CA
|
