• The New York Times , Monday, October 6, 2008 11:15 AM

There just aren't enough hours in a given sunrise to capture all the brand news that's out there. After filing this column on Friday, I signed off IM with my editor, put my feet up on the desk and dug into the sections of the metro New York Times other than Business, which by the way, as of this week, are organized differently than they had been to save on production costs.

First, I learned in the obituaries that the actor who played Mr. Clean for Procter & Gamble in all those commercials from the late 1950s and early 1960s, House Peters Jr., had died at the age of 92 in Los Angeles. I see why I felt such an affinity to Peters. He was born in New Rochelle, N.Y., as was I, and my father, and my grandfather. But he -- at least in his grime-busting incarnation -- had much less hair, many more muscles, and a gold earring I never got around to. Alas, the only videos out there in YouTube land are the animated versions, including this one that launched the brand in 1958. Interesting to hear Procter & Gamble mentioned right up front in the voiceover.

Then, in the Metro Section, I found the answer to who was playing the catchy tune in Apple's new iPod Nano spots -- a Brooklyn-based band called Chairlift that was formed by three friends who met at the University of Chicago. It sounded vaguely like Feist, in fact, who saw her career take off after Apple featured her "1,2,3,4" video   in a Nano spot last year. (I downloaded one album, bought CDs of two others, and watched her perform in Brooklyn this summer myself.)

Band drummer Patrick Wembley tells the Times' Jennifer 8. Lee that Chairlift members never met an Apple representative who contacted them for tickets for a performance. "They want to keep their new campaigns top secret -- so top secret that they are not even letting the band know they are going to be the song on the commercial," says Wembley .

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