Up and down.

I was planning a nostalgic look at one my childhood TV shows, a French Canadian thing that ran after school and featured, among other characters, a clown named Patof. He referred to his head as a boot (la botine). That's the influence young ones need alright.

But, instead I was sidetracked by the news that Muzak has filed for bankruptcy. I thought I would have a look at the soul of elevator music. ( Just to put things into context, according to Bankruptcydata.com, 2008 saw 231 major bankruptcies, although notable, it is far short of the 2001 dot com fiasco. number of 383.)

Founded in 1934, that's 75 years folks, by George Squire, an engineer, inventor and somewhat of an adventurer (he was the first passenger ever on an airplane, when in 1908 he took a short ride on a Wright Brothers aircraft).

But it was his invention of transmitting phonograph tunes over electrical wires in 1922 that started the Muzak story. He sold the patent to North American Company who in turn bankrolled the original Muzak, called Wired Radio Inc. (what a great name!) but it took 12 years to get the thing into the American marketplace. So in 1934, voila, he looked around for a catchy name and coined Muzak, by joining music and Kodak (after super popular portable camera of the time).

In one of those damned life ironies, Squire died that year and never saw how Muzak would change and bother the world for 3/4 's of a decade.