Legendary producer lands in Poway

He produced classic records from the Ramones, Talking Heads, Living Colour, Gladys Knight and Mick Jagger, and now he works out of a home studio in Poway.

Our music contributor Peter Blackstock got a chance this week to chat with Ed Stasium, the legendary producer who settled here after a career in New York and Los Angeles. It’s the first chapter in his new “Five Questions” series interviewing characters from San Diego’s music scene.

Here are three other stories on my mind this morning:

• After 190,000 Afghans came to the U.S. following the withdrawal of troops from their country, thousands ended up in San Diego County. The community is now gripped by confusion and fear in the aftermath of last month’s National Guard shooting.
  
• There’s a big boxing match in LA this weekend, and La Mesa’s Jonny “Magic” Mansour is part of the undercard. As our Gayle Lynn Falkenthal reports, Mansour has won five straight fights but is coming back from a bigger loss outside the ring. His mother died of cancer in May.
  
• The Midway Rising redevelopment is moving forward thanks to a state law, but it isn’t Gov. Gavin Newsom or faceless Sacramento bureaucrats who made it possible. As I reported this week, San Diego officials, projects and court cases expanded that law to the point that it could be used to circumvent San Diego’s decades-old coastal height limit.