It's a Youtube New Year

Back when cameras used film, Craig and I performed a ritual every Fall. We called it:

" Two *#!+^&! Minutes a Year!"

It required the children to remain still and smiling, looking quasi-cherubic for a mere two minutes while we tried to get a Suitable Holiday Family Photo to send to friends and family.

It was a L-o-n-g Two Minutes.

Disastrous, always, it resulted in tears, accusations, many trips to the drugstore photo counter and all-around poor parenting.

With the advent of digital photography, my job became loads easier: Find a shot of each kid and create a collage -- no more fussin' and fightin'. Bliss.

This year we decided to "Go Green" -- meaning no wasteful, expensive envelopes and stamps. Just a simple recording and video montage posted on Youtube.

I'm not sure why, but every recording we did sounded like a bar full of drunks at closing time. Thankfully, there were no tears, and only a smidgen of poor parenting was involved in the final product.

Not sure that this is progress, exactly, but our New Year's Card is here.

Selling Stuff/Selling Out?

What do you suppose is the biggest market for original music?

Last I heard, it was video game manufacturers. I found that bit of news depressing and, silly me, I thought things couldn't get worse.

Then along comes this excellent piece by Jon Pareles from the International Herald Tribune: The new route to musical stardom: Shilling for products on the unholy marriage of marketing and songwriting.

Are we cruising to hell in a handbasket? Should we order up cocktails and enjoy the ride? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The new route to musical stardom: Shilling for products

In the Dust

In the Dust is from our first CD, A Kiss Beneath the Sundial Bridge.

I don't write many love songs -- and when I do, I usually make Craig sing them. Pretty rotten of me, huh?

But I do like singing this song -- it's a bittersweet story about love that doesn't last for a lifetime, but shines passionately every now and then.




In the Dust

words and music © Erin Coombs Friedman



Not carved in stone or etched in a golden ring
A precious and a fleeting thing
Sometimes love lasts forever
But for us
It was written In The Dust
In The Dust


You drew a heart and our names in the dust
On the window of your daddy’s truck
Back in the summer of 1985
That old Chevy didn’t run too good
But we went farther than we should
Parked up on Mullholland Drive
Young love plans -- God just grins
The Santa Ana rushes in
That summer dust was caught up
In the wind

Not carved in stone or etched in a golden ring
A precious and a fleeting thing
Sometimes love lasts forever
But for us
It was written In The Dust
In The Dust


Drifted separate ways on a gypsy wind
But it spins us together now and then
Like in Lassen, hiking up the Cinder Cone
In Times Square we watched them drop the ball
Met by chance in Montreal
Made up for lost time all night long
I turn around and you turn up
Feel that old familiar rush
Trace our good times and good byes
In The Dust



Not carved in stone or etched in a golden ring
A precious and a fleeting thing
Sometimes love lasts forever
But for us
It was written In The Dust
In The Dust