I found the film’s soundtrack clever, affecting me enough that I had to wonder why. It opens with accordion music, crowd noise, and market speak. The accordion sets a romantic, communal, timeless mood with old folk melodies. It is the music of the people, fitting Seattle’s great market.

Accordions are used in folk music throughout Europe and North and South America. They are often used by buskers — street performers. Buskers are common at Pike Place Market itself, if not always with accordions.

At first we see an empty market, with some focus on leaking pipes and damaged infrastructure. In 1969, they needed to not only save The Market from development, but rebuild it from decades of structural neglect.

A vendor steps into view. We hear, then see The Market’s business being done, its teeming, happy crowds, some shopping for dinner and others with no apparent agenda. There is a lot of focus on prices, reminding us that without a profiteering middle man, The Market makes basic economic sense for both producers and consumers.

The accordion easily ebbs out of one melody and flows into another, many times over. It is as if you saw someone interesting in the crowd and tried to follow. You would get glimpses, then lose them at times, and get an occasional glance in return that would keep you following.

In the middle of the film we are shown the doors to the Athenian Inn Restaurant, next door to Lowell’s Restaurant & Bar. A 1960s, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass interlude overtakes the audio track. Their album “Whipped Cream & Other Delights” was all about food, and although it was four years old when this film was produced it was still all the rage. This is a nod to youths who not only made this film but generally contributed much to saving The Market. The instrumental music of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass did also appeal to many older adults, so it was a diplomatic choice.

We see a ferry and hear its horn while enjoying a view from inside Lowell’s. The interlude ends with a bit of “A Taste of Honey,” instrumentation including a Fender bass, an electric and an acoustic guitar.

It was over coffee at Lowell’s that Steinbrueck and friends hatched plans to save The Market in the 1960s. For nearly 100 years at both Lowell’s and the Athenian, there have been restaurants in this place where you could meet friends or make friends. They have been fertile ground for greatness for nearly all of Pike Place Market and Seattle history.

The accordion reemerges with a few ending scenes and the film credits. Daily business is done, a couple meanders, smiling arm in arm, and a grandfather leads his granddaughter by the hand.

The credits read “A University of Washington Film,” by B. Biggs, G. Coldevin, R. Dong, J. Dunn, D. Macdonald, D. Pratt, and C. Vollan, with Advisors J. Driscoll and T. Kirkman. To these Seattleites of 1969: for my many market adventures since 1992 when my family moved here and met The Market, and from 2008 when now I write: thank you.

Below: Peter and Victor Steinbrueck promoting the rehabilitation of Pike Place Market, also in 1969:

Photo courtesy Peter Steinbrueck and HistoryLink.org.

Article cover art by Brian Glanz, in part using images from the Seattle Municipal Archives.

These are awful, alpha-version names for something so easy to use. After you plug in all the parts — Firefox, Twitter, FoxyTunes itself, and your music source(s) — publishing your play list is a two-step process.

1 — Listen to music while you use the Internet.
2 — As you hear a track you want to share, click a link.

When you click a link in the FoxyTunes area of Firefox, FoxyTunes publishes linked tweets in your Twitter. Each tweet links to a super-page for the track you are sharing, and from there also publishes shared tracks to a fully connected, public play list.

On your play list page, each track you publish is again linked to its super-page. What’s so super about the track pages? Track pages are automatically populated with data from Wikipedia, YouTube, Last.fm, Yahoo! Music, Flickr, Amazon, and more, including videos, lyrics, musician profiles, related artists, etc. For an example, see the page for “Maria Maria” by Santana — it’s super!

The main feature on your play list page is a big, simple link that says “play all.” When you play all, a player opens in a panel over top of the same page. The player is fully loaded with top YouTube videos matching the tracks in your play list. You can listen and watch at the default size or full-screen, one track at a time or run the whole play list with no further interaction required. Here again for examples are my FoxyTunes Twitter DJ play list page and the official FoxyTunes Twitter DJ page.

Once you have FoxyTunes hooked up, then with just the minimum effort, you can share your music in style. There are many other means to this end, but they are all more labor-intensive. This is by far the laziest, most legal way to nicely share your favorite tracks with people you know and everyone you don’t.

The default content, connections, and wrapping are all state of the art. The track pages, YouTube videos, and audio are all as good as the wisdom of the crowd and cloud, so it’s not always perfect. For so little work on your part though, it’s far better than you could do alone.

Of FoxyTunes, I say: may it live long, and prosper.

Give it a try by starting with the official FoxyTunes Twitter DJ page.

Update: Since I began using FoxyTunes, FoxyTunes joined Yahoo! and FoxyTunes runs on Internet Explorer 7+ in addition to Firefox 2+.

For DJs who want more control, it’s easy enough to trade more work for better results while still riding FoxyTunes. You can easily add your own text per track that you publish to Twitter — that ability is built into FoxyTunes. You could also bypass FoxyTunes in your browser, but otherwise publish to Twitter using a combination of your custom content and FoxyTunes’ syntax, which then triggers the play list building down stream. You could edit Wikipedia and publish custom videos to YouTube, connecting those dots to tracks you associate with in FoxyTunes.

In the end, you could take your play list and restyle it on your own site, blog, or profile page. With all the tools and samples available to developers, designers, hackers, crackers, makers, bakers, and hangers-on these days, you can publish your FoxyTunes Twitter DJ play list just-so. I found enough magic in all the defaults, but someone publishing more professionally could get still more from FoxyTunes Twitter DJ.