Wise Words

This American Idol era has changed the dynamic of performing. It's created a slew of artists whose sole qualifications are that they can dazzle an audience. Longevity, depth, conviction, honest communication? Not on the menu this week.


I grew up listening to The Weavers, and I still love to sing the old songs they shared with such passion. How refreshing to read an interview with folk music legend Pete Seeger in this month's Performing Songwriter magazine. The man is still going strong at 89 -- and wise, indeed.


His advice to young people:


"Sing for as many different kinds of audiences as you possibly can. Old people, young people, angry people, sentimental people, religious people, anti-religious people, lefties, righties, and in-betweenies. Sing for them, and you will learn from all of them."


The first part of the interview is available here. For the rest of it, I'd be happy to share my copy of the magazine with anyone who would like it.


Here's a clip from The Weaver's reunion at Carnegie Hall:

Musical Gifts

Yeah -- I needed another reason to stick close to my computer. Thanks to my friend Molly, I'm now hooked on the Internet radio site Pandora.com.


Maybe everybody has already discovered this cool music delivery option? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that I was the last to know.


With Pandora, you plug in an artist, a style, a song, and create a radio station that plays on your computer. It "learns" about your musical tastes based on some very complicated analysis of the songs you like. The folks at Pandora have created what they call a "Music Genome."


From their web site:


"Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like. "


Pandora uses your preferences to introduce you to artists that fit your profile -- I'm finding artists I really enjoy listening to that I'd never heard of (Brandi Carlile, Cactus Choir) and rediscovering artists that I'd forgotten about (Kate Wolf, David Mallett).


Waiting for the next song is a little bit like opening a Christmas gift - it'll be a surprise and I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it.


Check it out here: Pandora.com

Monday Skyscapes

Mondays.


Not my favorite day of the week -- especially after a lovely, relaxing weekend with the family.

But a day that starts like this:

and ends like this:

is -- for a Monday -- not bad at all.