The Investigation Begins

With the tragic shooting deaths in Nashville  of Steve McNair and 20 year old Sahel Kazemi on July 4th  come the inevitable theories and closer investigations. Being in Nashville, the local media is taking a detailed glimpse into the two principals, as seen in this article in today’s Tennessean…

July 6, 2009

Girlfriend had hoped to wed McNair

Woman’s family was leery of affair with former Titan By Chris Echegaray and Kate Howard THE TENNESSEAN

By all accounts it was a whirlwind romance. It started about six months ago, when former Titans quarterback Steve McNair exchanged phone numbers with Sahel Kazemi, a then-19-year-old waitress working at Dave & Buster’s restaurant at Opry Mills. Saturday, the relationship ended in tragedy, as the couple was found shot to death in a downtown condominium. Police continue to investigate the circumstances of the events leading up to the deaths, but according to friends of Kazemi, she was smitten and so was McNair. For her 20th birthday in late May, McNair got her a black Cadillac Escalade. Her family met him over sushi dinner that same weekend. Before that, Kazemi zipped around in his Bentley, telling family and friends about the generosity of her new beau — a former professional athlete. “We met him because I don’t watch football and didn’t know who he was,” said Farzin Abdi, Kazemi’s nephew, who was in town from Jacksonville, Fla. to retrieve the body. “We went out to dinner and she was so happy and was having fun. Were we happy about the relationship? No.” Kazemi’s family and friends pieced together a portrait of their relationship — one they were leery of because of her age — as police confirmed on Sunday that McNair was shot four times. Police have stopped just shy of calling it a murder-suicide at the Second Avenue condominium where both of them died. “It’s hard right now to imagine what people are saying,” Abdi said. “I can’t believe it because she was a sweet girl. This is hard on us.” Marriage anticIpated There were trips, dinners, a promise of living together and ultimately marriage, according to Abdi, 27. “I don’t know if he had filed for divorce but I thought it wouldn’t happen,” Abdi said, adding that Kazemi was a child when adopted into the family after her mother died in Iran. Abdi’s mother is Kazemi’s sister. McNair took Kazemi, known as Jenny to friends, on trips to Key West in Florida, Las Vegas, California, Hawaii and McNair’s farm in Mississippi, with the couple seeing each other often, Abdi said. Pictures of the smiling couple parasailing were posted Sunday afternoon on the celebrity gossip site TMZ.com. Kazemi told Abdi they would take a break when McNair would go away on his own with his children. McNair and the children recently returned from Mexico, Abdi said. “I was under the impression that his family knew about her,” Abdi said. “That he took the children alone with him on vacation is a sign that they were separated.” Kazemi told her sister, Sepideh Salmani, that McNair was in the process of divorcing. Kazemi, though younger than Abdi and Salmani, was actually their aunt but they were raised as siblings. Salmani talked to her sister every day and said she was very happy in her relationship with McNair. “That’s why she was like, ‘OK, now you’re divorcing. We can date,’ ” Salmani said. “He told her, it was going to be finished, the whole divorce was going to be done, two weeks from yesterday.” Although a check of Davidson County’s court records shows there is no divorce pending — at least in Nashville — McNair’s house is for sale. His wife, Mechelle McNair, hasn’t spoken to the media. Police said she is distraught over his death. Kazemi was a young woman who wanted to have fun and couldn’t have hurt anyone — not herself or someone else, Salmani said. ‘A super sweet girl’ McNair and Kazemi met earlier this year in January or February at Dave & Buster’s. She was attractive and approachable, family and friends say. McNair was a regular, often coming in with family, friends or alone. “He was one of the nice guys who would talk to you, not like the other athletes,” said Brandon Millichamp, who worked with Kazemi at the restaurant. “And she was a super sweet girl. I was surprised to hear about their dating and this was so out of the blue.” When Kazemi was moving to a Hermitage apartment, McNair was also there, prompting neighbors to wonder who was moving in. But Kazemi had a roommate who quickly moved out as she had moved in, neighbors said. Kazemi also didn’t like living alone, Abdi said. One of the conversations turned to talk about Abdi going to a shooting range in Florida. He told Kazemi that since she didn’t like being alone — or if she felt unsafe — getting a gun carry permit would be an option. “She told me she didn’t have to because Steve had lots of guns,” Abdi said. As her birthday approached in May, Abdi said, Kazemi wanted the family to visit Nashville. “Don’t buy me any gifts, just come and spend my birthday with me,” she told Abdi and her sister. Abdi said they met and partied with McNair at local clubs. Still, the family was hoping she’d reconsider moving back to Florida. Others were jealous The family was worried about the rapid relationship and the extravagance that came with it. “She was in a Bentley and I don’t think it was right because there are jealous people,” Abdi said. “People were telling her that they didn’t have anyone to pay their bills or buy them things.” Kazemi first came to Nashville nearly four years ago with her then-boyfriend, Keith Norfleet. They broke up about six months ago, and she started seeing McNair soon after. The family says the ex-boyfriend was not happy about her seeing the former quarterback and wanted to rekindle their relationship. But Kazemi had moved on and remained friends with Norfleet. Neighbors said they overheard arguments come from her Hermitage apartment periodically, and occasionally saw Kazemi dropped off by a limo service. Abdi said they were minor arguments without giving details of the spats. Neighbor Regan Howard thought things were fine between the couple when Kazemi arrived in the Escalade — her birthday gift from McNair. Howard recalls Kazemi not knowing how to use some of the vehicle’s accessories, like the remote keys and other buttons. “She was a nice, pretty girl, who acted like any other 19 or 20-year-old,” Howard said. Kazemi and her family moved to the U.S. in 2002, fleeing Iran to Turkey before settling in Florida. As members of the Baha’i Faith, they were in danger in Iran. They quickly got acclimated in the U.S. Kazemi worked hard and liked earning her own money, the family said. Her greatest dream, Salmani said, was to be famous. “I think she is now,” Salmani said. “She is everywhere.”

1979: The Beginning of a Mega-Trend

Time flies when you’re having fun… To those too young to remember, 1979 was quite a year. Jimmy Carter was president, bell-bottoms still reigned, and music was—interesting to say the least. There were a few milestones that year, as there are every year. One unique introduction to the world came from Sony—and if you were among the truly hip, you had one. They called it the Walkman…

Here’s a look back in time from Info World…

By Martyn Williams

Created 2009-07-01 03:45 AM

Sony introduced its Walkman portable cassette player thirty years ago this week, kicking off a revolution in the consumer electronics industry by changing the way people enjoy music.

Until its introduction, the only way people could enjoy their own choice of music while on the go was to lug around a larger, heavier cassette player, but the Walkman brought music to the belt-clip, purse or pocket.

The first Walkman, the TPS-L2, cost ¥33,000 in Japan and US$200 in the U.S., but despite the relatively high price tag the reception was enthusiastic. In 1980 The Wall Street Journal called the Walkman “one of the hottest new status symbols around” and noted that prospective U.S. owners faced a month-long wait because of a backlog in orders.

The player had several features that were innovative for the time including dual headphone sockets, independent volume control for the left and right audio channels and the distinctive orange “hotline” button on the top that faded the tape output and engaged a microphone so the listener could talk to someone nearby without stopping the music or taking off their headphones.

The design and much of the mechanics of the TPS-L2 was based on a model that came out in 1978 but was never branded as Walkman. The TCM-100 was a portable cassette recorder aimed at people who needed the ability to record audio clips on the go, such as business people and journalists. The TPS-L2 brought the technology to the mass-market.

With the success of the Walkman a product line was born that would go on to become one of the world’s best-known brand names — but that global branding almost didn’t happen. Fearing that “Walkman” wasn’t proper English, Sony initially chose the brand name “Soundabout” for the U.S. market, derived from the word walkabout, and “Stowaway” for the U.K. It wasn’t until a year later, in 1980, that Walkman became the global brand name.

Within a few years the products were developing fast.

The WM-2, introduced in 1981, was notable for its styling, which was much more modern that of the TPS-L2 and also offered in several colors to suit personal tastes. By 1983, just four years after the launch of the Walkman, Sony introduced the WM-20, which was the same size as a cassette case. Then in 1984 the Walkman line expanded with the introduction of the D-50, the first CD Walkman.

For much of the eighties and nineties Sony reigned supreme in the personal audio space. It sold hundreds of millions of Walkman players and was the standard by which most competing products were judged. However, things started to change with the arrival of digital music.

Sony’s first Walkman to accept digital files, the NW-MS7, was introduced in Japan in December 2000 and went on sale elsewhere the following year. The product tied Sony’s MemoryStick flash media format with its ATRAC file format and MagicGate copy protection.

Sony didn’t know it at the time but the formula would prove disastrous to Walkman’s leading position in the portable audio market.

The introduction of digital music didn’t just mean more convenience for users. It lowered the entry barrier to the player market and suddenly companies that had never made a digital audio player before could throw together a few chips, add some buttons and a display — or more likely find a Taiwanese contract manufacturer to do this for them — and launch their own player.

Users were rallying around downloaded music or ripping CDs into the MP3 format and there was no shortage of companies lining up to sell them players. In contrast Sony was requiring users convert MP3 files to ATRAC before they could be loaded on the Walkman.

Apple’s entry to the market in 2001 with the iPod was the first step in a what would be a short journey to replace Sony as the most fashionable brand name in portable audio.

In recent years under CEO Howard Stringer Sony has been attempting to reinvigorate its Walkman line and sales have been rising. Sony sold 7 million Walkman digital music players in the financial year that ended in March, up from 4.5 million in 2006. For the current financial year it expects to sell 6.3 million units, a lower number due in part to the poor economy.

Sony’s latest flagship model, the NW-X1000, packs noise cancelling, a bright touchscreen display, mobile TV, and the ability to surf the Internet and watch YouTube videos. It’s already on sale in major markets and supports Sony’s ATRAC format but also MP3, Windows Media and Linear PCM in addition to AVC, MPEG4 and WMV9 video files.