ONOFFON

[Casey H]

A belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my friends Nomi and Von! CaSeY

[davewalton]

Quote:A belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my friends Nomi and Von! CaSeYI caught Von's birthday but not Nomi's. Happy belated BD Nomi!

[onoffon]

Quote:Amazing, Nomi, you look much younger and prettier than Von.She has a kinder heart and gentler spirit, too...

[nomiyah]

Thanks for the birthday wishes and the compliments!!!!!!(Drew, appreciate the compliment but just to clarify the concept you may be confused about, having the same birthday doesn't make us the same age. )

[onoffon]

Well... including the fourteen letters I sent today, I have now approached 100 foundations that specifically support Arts and Culture. This is quite an experience for me - I've had some amazing conversations with a few of the foundation reps. I spoke with the executive director of the Herb Alpert Foundation. Funny thing - my dad was the bassist on Herb Alpert's first album, The Lonely Bull. It was before he created the Tijuana Brass and the band was made up of the top studio guys in Los Angeles. Just another interesting side note in the story of my father's career... Anyway, I have had ten 'regret to inform you' letters, but I'm still in the running with the Ford Foundation and the Puffin Foundation. Not to mention the 88 I haven't heard back from yet. The quest continues...

[onoffon]

Here's a nice ONOFFON SSP of the Day - a gentleman visited our website the other day and signed our guestbook - this is what he had to say -Name: Claudiu O.E-Mail: info@jazzworldquest.comHomepage Title: JazzWorldQuestHomepage URL: http://www.jazzworldquest.comReferred By: Just Surfed InLocation: USAComments: "I've found your website at music.downloads.com where I downloaded the 3 MP3s offered there and I really like your music. I'd like to invite you to visit our website http://www.jazzworldquest.com and the online radio program where we feature mostly jazz fusion, world fusion. We will be glad to include your music in our radio program, just let us know in case you may want to send us a sample. All the best!"Well... I, of course, gave him permission to include our music in their broadcasts, which air on Live365, and he also has a podcast that I also let him add our music to.To my surprise, he built this really cool page on his website featuring ONOFFON -jazzworldquest.com-ONOFFONhttp://www.jazzworldquest.com/onoffon.shtmlHow cool is that? I'm sending him our three CDs so he has the best possible sound quality.Our sincere thanks to Claudiu for his support of our music...

[Casey H]

Quote:BTW - under the heading of 'proud parent', my oldest son, a junior in high school, is pulling a 3.5 grade point average at a science based magnate program that I've just successfully got my youngest son accepted into next year. It doesn't get much better than that...I think we may spin off a new "proud parent" thread. My daughter will be attending [a prestigious university] in Pennsylvania starting in the fall. She's been an honor student all through HS and a terrific kid. This past Saturday was her Senior Prom and she looked so gorgeous in her gown: www.caseysongs.com/Prom.jpg Proud Papa Casey

[onoffon]

Thanks Nomi - I'll pass your kind words along to my son. And congrats to you, Casey - you have a beautiful daughter that you have every reason to be quite proud of.It's harder and harder in this world to inspire today's youth to understand the worth of integrity and hard work - especially in the arts and definitely in music. Ultimately, we all have to realize everything we do influences somebody. If more people realized that we all need to live our lives by example, even in our most everyday, mundane tasks, those who are witness to our individual behavior will see nothing but positive role models, whether you are Von Babasin or Donald Trump.I know that's a tall order but the world would be a better place if we would all just accept responsibility for our actions...Enough of my soapbox - the ONOFFON SSP of the Day is a very nice front page feature on the site I mentioned a couple of posts ago -JazzWorldQuest.com - Jazz of the Worldhttp://www.jazzworldquest.com Thanks again to the site's creator, Claudiu O.Also, another great coup for Derek Sivers and CD Baby. He has just negotiated an artist distribution deal with a company called -Super D/Phantom Distributionhttp://www.sdcd.com/Thanks to this company, ONOFFON's CDs can now be ordered from more than 2,400 physical music stores in America and worldwide.CD Baby continues to be on the cutting edge of music distribution for the independent artist. Thanks Derek!Cheers!

[onoffon]

Hey folks - *whew* - I'm up to 133 foundations now... man, I need a break. Sometimes, you just have to walk away to clear your brain.Oh yeah, and a cool little email came today for a nice ONOFFON SSP of the Day -"Dear OnOffOn,It's my pleasure to tell you that you are on today's Preying Lizard Music's Chill Pill show which is a podcast getting thousands of listeners and it's not even a week old. Countless hours of promotion and great songs like yours have made this a very hot show! In fact, if you do a google search you will see that the soft rock shows are in the top ten and taking up most of the results page! Click this link to check it out!http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=so ... odcastsThe show is not even a week old! You'll also notice that the first one listed is "Most Popular Soft Rock Podcasts" and Preying Lizard is in the description!! I'm not bragging, I'm just letting you know that you are being heard by a lot of people now. So, if you want to check out the show just go to -http://www.preyinglizardmusic.com/podcast.htmThere you will find a Blast player. Just click on it, select the Chill Pill Show, and it will begin playing. It's my pleasure to include you on the show and you'll be on many more since it's now a daily show running from Monday-Saturday and is updated at 2:00pm Central. Be cool and have a great day!Later,Les"That came from our old friend, Les Lewellyn, and his Preying Lizard Music website... thanks to Les and Dixie for their tireless support of independent music...

[onoffon]

I thought I would let you all know what's involved in my quest for funding the documentary -First, is a trip to Kinko's to make copies of the NYFA paperwork - their letter of representation, board of directors, IRS determination, and operating budget. I now make fifty sets at a time. These accompany my written letters to the foundations. Next, is the research. I have to go into the foundation resource NYFA gave me access to and find the various appropriate foundations to make inquries to. I write down the address and contact information for each one. It takes approximately an hour to find ten that are right.Then, I go into my letter of inquiry and make all the appropriate changes. Of course, there are the address and name corrections. And, while the basic description of the project stays the same, each foundation has specific mission statements and requirements that I need to subtly adjust. Once those are made, I print them out. Again, approximately ten an hour.Next, I compile all the pages, paper clip them, and put them into envelopes that I have to individually address. Again, about ten every hour.Finally, I take a walk to my local post office and mail them off.So, every ten LOI's I send off represents about four hours of work. I've now sent a total of 151 LOI's, with another 22 foundations I just researched today. I'll go to Kinko's in the morning...