If These Walls Could Talk

Photo by Mike McGill>>>Linda Jemison—the woman who puts the Linda in Linda's Doll Hut—is seeking old photos and personal stories about her much-revered Anaheim club. Especially of interest are the years before 1989, when Jemison took charge of the tiny roadhouse (built sometime between 1900 and 1910) at 107 S. Adams St. and started booking bands there. The Hut history hunt is part of Jemison's plan to seek landmark status for her building, a process that almost always requires an assemblage of archival material. When people hear phrases like “planning to seek landmark status,” it's almost always in conjunction with an impending demolition. But the Hut isn't in any danger, Jemison tells LowBallAssChatter. Her effort is instead a “just in case” push, something to deter potential developers 10 or 20 years down the road—a time when Disney may indeed own the whole of Anaheim. Jemison says she'd like to write a book about the Hut using the stories and photos, and she also plans to make a documentary film that would touch on all the various music scenes her club has nurtured. Any pics or tales to tell? Buzz the Hut at (714) 879-6745. (Rich Kane)

>>> COME SNORT AWAY Though the practice of payola has been reported over the decades, it was nice to get a reminder. During a VH1 Behind the Music special last week, representatives of the band Styx were refreshingly candid about how they once bribed radio programmers with cocaine back in the '70s in order to secure airplay for the schlock-rock smash “Come Sail Away.” There's little reason to think the tactic has stopped, and it provides a potential explanation for the question on everybody's mind (and at the top of the Republican and Democratic platforms): Why, 25 years after Styx, are the airwaves filled with equally unlistenable dreck? One possibility: poor-but-talented indie bands simply can't afford the quantities of blow it takes to get spun on the radio! (RK)

>>> MARTHA MY DEAR As if napkin holders fashioned from bamboo that you picked up in a little boutique in China, ice swans with real currants for eyes (it's a good thing), and homemade candles made from a hearty paste of old shoes, beeswax and gazelle spit weren't enough, Martha Stewart now wants your radio. Her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., signed an agreement with Rhino Records to jointly produce and distribute compilation albums for entertaining. Because, you know, what exactly do you do when you're planning to throw a little shindig for 100 of your closest friends, and the theme is “The Gold Rush,” and you've dug a canal in your front yard (the azaleas will grow back) and filled it with gold flecks and water so your friends can “pan for gold” while they wait for the valet (not real gold, silly; it's pyrite. Isn't that a hoot?), and you've had authentic hay flown in from a quaint little farm in Iowa, and you've even hired a covered wagon to ferry guests from the front yard to the back yard, and you think everything's in order and then you realize—horror of horrors!—that you haven't made arrangements regarding what the guests will listen to while they embroider their names on their vintage Levi's jeans with Puffy Paint, which you thought would be a nice little icebreaker! Whatever will you do? Thank God that Martha is one step ahead of you! “We know that recorded audio elements can add an air of elegance, mystery, romance and magic to any entertainment event, whether for one or 100,” Stewart says in her press release. The first album, Spooky, Scary Sounds for Halloween, doesn't feature Stewart saying that, but features instead “authentic, eerie effects . . . to scare and thrill trick-or-treaters at their own front doors.” It will be “aggressively marketed,” which we find, well, spooky. (Alison M. Rosen)