Alice, Joe - backtracking to the earlier part of this thread (Sorry, I haven't been here in a week and a half.. :)), I definitely agree that music should get back to being a daily part of life. It is for me.. I currently have my boombox sitting two feet away on my computer desk, cranking out Dougie MacLean, and if everyone in the house weren't asleep, I'd be singing along. I sing along with everything possible, and when I can't play music, I'll often find myself singing something stuck in my head anyway... it's really amusing to watch the looks I get walking down to work belting out the rousing chorus to something-or-other, with all the cars going past and the drivers giving me funny stares. I think it's something I picked up from my mother.. she sings along with music she knows well, and sings whatever's stuck in her head as well.. it's rather funny when both of us are walking around the house singing two completely different things and not even noticing. Could is be the Russian peasant blood? As I understand it, the peasants sang all the time, at least as Tolstoy would have it (I'm being forced to read _Anna Karenina_ for my summer reading). As for what I love about live music.. well, I haven't gotten nearly a much of that as I would like to, but most of the live stuff I've been exposed to has been folk, Renaissance, and Celtic, which is great.. and being that it's at RenFaires, you can request songs, wander up to the minstrels and talk to them about the songs, even sing along if everybody's comfortable with that.. and life performances are always slightly different every time they're done, and sometimes there's an energy there that comes from interacting directly with people. And making live music.. it's wonderful. There's something about putting your energy into your voice or instrument that's just great... :)