Our November 12, 2007

Featured Guests

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Check for current gigs for these guests.

Everyone who was there will tell you that the November show was hot Hot HOT!  First off, Mal Sharpe did double duty as a San Francisco raconteur and a smoking jazz trombonist/singer.  His renditions -- with the North Beach Irregulars, of course -- of "Dinah" and "Sunny Side of the Street" were not to be missed.  Then doctor/author David Watts had such an interesting take on the future of the medical profession that the audience literally would not let him off the stage . . . we actually had to extend the interview so Kurt could let David go a little further with his thoughts.  Same thing with our final guest -- Jessica Jackley Flannery's passion sold us all on the benefits of micro-financing through kiva.org.   Plus, as if things weren't swinging enough, we had Clint Baker sitting in with Ned and the band on cornet; so much so that the after-party lasted until after 10:30 pm.   A great night.

MAL SHARPE

Legendary radio personality, musician and humorist, Mal Sharpe was a member of the revolutionary broadcasting duo of Coyle & Sharpe. They were the early masters of street pranks and puts-ons. Using hidden microphones, they clandestinely recorded their bizarre encounters with unsuspecting citizens on the streets of San Francisco in the 1960s.

Perhaps 40 years ahead of their time, Coyle and Sharpe defined what is now commonplace on radio and TV with shows. In 1964, they were hired by KGO in San Francisco to do a nightly radio show called “Coyle & Sharpe On The Loose.”  In 1964, they recorded two albums for Warner Bros., “The Absurd Impostors” and “The Insane Minds of Coyle & Sharpe.” They did a hidden camera television pilot, “The Impostors.” In 1967, Coyle left California to pursue a career in tunneling. He died in 1993 while burrowing under the city of Barcelona. Sharpe continued to work in media where he did hundreds of man-on-the-street interviews for radio and television. In the year 2000, The Whitney Museum hosted a centennial exhibit, The American Century. Coyle & Sharpe were featured in the Soundworks Exhibit.

Mal Sharpe continues to do commercials and voiceovers. A master trombonist, he leads his Dixieland jazz band, The Big Money In Jazz Band, with their new CD, Tin Roof Blues. For over 15 years, he has hosted a Sunday nightshow “Back On Basin Street” on KCSM/Jazz 91 in the Bay Area. He and his wife, Sandra, live in Berkeley, published a coffee table book, and have appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

DAVID WATTS

David Watts is from a family of musicians, farmers, educators, and philosophers and has slowly wandered through most of the family professions throwing medicine into the mix. He is a gastroenterologist and a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, a professor of literature and poetry at the Fromm Institute, a classically trained musician, a television producer and host, and author of three books of poetry and a collection of stories from the practice of medicine, Bedside Manners. His commentaries can be heard on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Watts is the inventor of the Third Eye Retroscope, an endoscopic innovation to aid gastroenterologists in the detection of colon cancer, currently in clinical trials at Avantis Medical Systems of Sunnyvale, California.

He founded the Writing the Medical Experience Conference at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and Sarah Lawrence College. Each summer this conference brings the best writers in the nation together with aspiring writers to study and perfect the craft of writing about illness and healing.

Watts grew up in Texas but sidled out to California where he now lives in Mill Valley with his wife, the poet Joan Baranow, and their two excellent sons. His upcoming books include a memoir and a second collection of medical stories.

JESSICA JACKLEY FLANNERY

Jessica Jackley Flannery is a co-founder of Kiva.org with her husband Matt, and the spirit behind the organization. Jessica first saw the power and beauty of microfinance while working in rural Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda with Village Enterprise Fund and Project Baobab on impact evaluation and program development. Jessica has worked in a variety of organizations in the public, nonprofit, and private sector, and serves on numerous boards in the Bay Area. Jessica has spoken widely on microfinance and social entrepreneurship, and has shared the vision for Kiva.org in more than 30 countries worldwide. Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University.