The Legend-News
Lost and Loster
In this week's mail, I received a letter from Stephanie Wegner, who has a local connection to C.W. McCall. She also tells of the 'Lost Lakes' of Colorado.
Hi, I caught up to your C.W. McCall page and was glad to find it. Whenever I get really homesick for Colorado (I'm in Texas now.), I put on his music. It really is home, since my dad was born in Telluride and I know whereof McCall sings. I'm from a town about 60 miles from McCall's home in Ouray.
The Lost Lake I believe you've been trying to find is (as I understand it, since there're a lot of "Lost Lakes" in mountain areas) is a series of lakes near Ouray. Several of us were hiking in famed Yankee Boy Basin outside of Ouray, trying to get to the top of Mt. Sneffels (one of CO's 14ers--14,000 ft or more). Instead we ended up on a high ridge over looking the most glorious set of lakes I have ever seen. They were a LONG way below us. Someone said they were called Lost Lakes. I can see why.
I doubt they'd be listed on any atlas. Probably they'd have to be seen on a USGS topo map. I have a great post card of them, too. (Will send you a copy of the card via snail-mail if you're interested.)
Thanks for the site. I've really enjoyed it.
Stephanie
I am now firmly convinced that there is a 'Lost Lake' conspiracy afoot.
Surfin' With The Rubber Duck
I occasionally survey the major search engines just to see how my C.W. McCall pages are ranked. Being Numero Uno isn't a life or death situation; I'm not selling anything here. But as
the
C.W. McCall resource (insert sound of head swelling), I feel that my duty is to have
An American Legend
as at least one of the first ten results from any search engine.
You would think that with this site -- TechRen Enterprises, in general -- having been indexed by most of the big search engines, that a search on an uncommon phrase associated with C.W. McCall would produce a a TRE hit first. Nope. The uncommon phrase in question is "Kidnap America", a.k.a. The C.W. McCall Song That No One Remembers.
Northern Light, which seemed to list all of the other C.W. McCall pages on www.techren.com, gave only two hits:
- The Hypnotic, which contains the lyrics to a song entitled 'No Great Pretender'. One line is "Kidnap America - Riq' you hold it for Ransom", which is very similar to "Kidnap America/Hold it for ransom" from C.W.'s "Kidnap America".
- Spider-Man Enemies: Chameleon. But the phrase is just a coincidence, being a portion of "...kidnap America's leading expert...". If you don't know who Spider-Man is, where have you been since 1963?
A disappointing showing. :( Herewith, the results from other search engines...
- Altavista. Six items: 4 of mine, plus the two from Northern Light.
- Excite. The index of the Lyrics page.
- Go Network. One page: a listing for the 1940 Dead End Kids movie, "Junior G-Men".
- Hotbot. Nothing found.
- Lycos. Ten hits, but no C.W.
- Open Directory Project. Nothing, but I'm not surprised. I submitted my URL only two weeks ago, and they probably haven't yet processed it.
- Google. The "Chameleon" page (see Northern Light, above) ranks higher than my lyrics index, and sites two and three are two more pages of the lyrics to 'No Great Pretender'.
- Yahoo. Nothing.
- AOL NetFind. Found: the "Kidnap America" lyrics page and the page about The Singles.
- Deja, formerly Dejanews. Yes, it searches Usenet and not the World Wide Web, but maybe someone's talking about C.W. Well, maybe not, as the only hit was a message about "Scottish attitudes towards guns".
- EuroFerret. Nothing. But then, the Ferret is a list of European web sites, and I don't qualify.
- Fast Search, a.k.a. "All The Web". Bingo. We're Number One! We're Number One! And Five and Eight and Nine. The other links are for the previously-mentioned "Spider-Man", more pages about "No Great Pretender", and The Record Finder. Coincidentally, The Record Finder is where I found my copy of "Kidnap America". Seems as if they still have a copy remaining.
- GoTo.com. GoTo nothing.
- LookSmart. Four matches on me, plus the same two hits as Northern Light.
- WebCrawler. Nothing.
- Snap.com. Nothing.
Conclusion: I've got work to do. Spreading the Gospel of C.W. isn't as easy as I thought that it would be.
On a non-kidnapping note, I've found a former Cool Site of the Year which mentions a love of "Convoy"; check the entry for 4:35 p.m. There's also a QuickTime movie of a guy named Richard, who sings the first lines of "Convoy".
Song A’ Th’ Week
Y'know, I just haven't featured any non-vocal composition as a Song A’ Th’ Week. I will rectify that omission right now.
Although this piece can be found an C.W. McCall & Co., it's actually from the Motion Picture "Convoy".
Silver Cloud Breakdown
(Chip Davis, Bill Fries)
From the album C.W. McCall & Co..