According to market research company NPD Group, in the first quarter of 2007, Apple's iTunes Store has overtaken Amazon.com and Target to become the US's third largest music retailer with 9.8% of all music sales. Apple counts 12 track sales as equivalent to one CD sale, meaning that the company is responsible for nearly 21 million of the quarter's 212 million CD sales.
The old saw about "the first album was their best" is often true, truer than most artists want to admit. And no where in music is that state more widespread than with singer/songwriters who only have a guitar, their voice and their material and no band to hide behind. Trying to hack out a career as a solo act is a bitch. Takes guts or overweening ego to get through it. Most soloists fall prey to the natural reaction which is to pour all their best ideas into the first project. That's cool until you're faced with coming up with a second and perhaps a third record. Yet sometimes the process can reverse itself, and after a fallow period a songwriter can recharge, again have something to say, and they come through with a late season masterpiece.
And Dramatic Chipmunk is the proof.
But after careful deliberation, I realized that my dream was actually telling me to get some new speakers.
I was expecting to hear from so many more of you. But no matter: The band will grow in time.
Bagheera, ever the lady, looks askance at Huck's antics.
Huckleberry is the only cat we've ever owned who can be both crazed <I>and</I> stationary. It's a gift.
I don't know about you, but I can't resist an essay that begins: "San Francisco is a city without graves. In 1900, the board of supervisors passed an ordinance prohibiting burials within the city limits. In 1912, the board announced its further intention to eliminate the city’s previously existing cemeteries, and in 1914 removal notices were sent to all burial sites, declaring them 'a public nuisance and a menace and detriment to the health and welfare of city dwellers.'"
If Keith Jarrett weren’t such a magnificent pianist, it would be intolerable to watch him in concert. His screechy humming and moaning, his lizard leering and preening—in three decades of seeing him play, I’ve never managed, despite some effort, to find the charm in his theatrics. And yet, he usually has me from his first chord—so warm, rich, and intriguingly edgy—especially the past few years, as he’s tightened his rhapsodic tendencies while enriching his lyrical core.
"Seen the extra-long trailer for <I>Ratatouille</I>?" I asked Paul DiComo.