LATEST ADDITIONS

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.

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.

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.