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WHO WE ARE
• Experienced web publisher
• Arts promoter
• Musician
Words and Computers
webKazoo founder Mike Jones has been publishing on the Internet since 1995 -- practically the pioneer days for the web. His first experience with computers came in 1970, when he learned to write simple graphics programs (in a language named WATFOR) while a student in aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
Mike's later experience with web design
began when he was a web producer for the site run by the New
Haven Register daily newspaper. He later was named editor of the site, and was in charge of getting 125-150 stories from the paper online each day. It was a wonderful change after years of writing screaming headlines as a copy editor.
Before that he was a reporter and columnist for the (Hamilton) Journal-News, a daily newspaper in his native Ohio. When he was arts editor for that paper he reviewed concerts, movies, art exhibits and theater productions, earning him the nickname of "Mr. Entertainment."
His journalism career included many years
at the New Haven Register as a copy editor, and a supervising
editor responsible for assigning reporters and editing their
work.
Music and the Arts
Mike's lifelong interest in music comes naturally -- both his parents were music teachers and performers. He has fond memories of singing as a teen-ager in church choirs directed by his father and accompanied by his mother on pipe organ, but he doesn't miss sitting through two church services every Sunday.
To his parents' chagrin, Mike turned out to have a talent for drumming. He played various percussion instruments in junior high and high school, and loved wearing that swell uniform in the marching band, where he was captain of the drum squad his senior year.
Years later he continued his drumming interest
by organizing, promoting and hosting the Green
Rhythms drum festivals on the New Haven Green. The Green Rhythms
festivals were participatory events -- hundreds of drummers and
percussionists brought drum sets, congas, djembes, ashikos, dumbeks,
timbales, cymbals, shakers, cowbells and all sorts of other noisemakers
to the Green and played together for hours and hours. If you don't
think that was a lot of fun, then you don't understand drumming.
Mike spent about eight years in the drum seat
for the rock and roll band "Andy
Gray and the Rebels," based in New Haven. They played original
rock tunes as well as mostly British covers (songs by the Kinks,
the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Clash, the Sex Pistols),
blues, reggae and the occasional country song. He has also been the
drummer for a pop band and a couple of blues bands.
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