Hi Jerry and everybody else--

Jerry, sure is good to see your progress in putting your music together for us all--and yourself, of course. I'd definitely be interested in a CD of the music you're now cataloguing--particularly if it winds up to be just you and your guitar. (But you really should let us pay you for those CD's.)   In folk music I'm a big fan of stripped-down sound. I was just recently listening to one of Gordon Lightfoot's first commercial recordings. Just him, another guitarist, and a string bass player. It lets the songs stand front and center. Early Morning Rain, For Lovin' Me, Steel Rail Blues, etc. Supposedly Gordon himself doesn't like the record. Can't explain it.

Anyway, please keep us posted as to how the project is going.

I'm sitting at our computer--a Mac-- and it's just amazing how the 20-somethings who run I-tunes seem to have very little idea of any music but what they themselves listen to. I've put a CD I own, of Handel violin sonatas in the "library" on the computer. Category, as far as they're concerned, is Gospel and Religious. Handel may have been feeling quite pious when he wrote them--(more likely he did it on commission)--but they're all just violin and harpsichord.   Bill Cosby (Is A Very Funny Fellow) comes under Classical. Admittedly it does have the Noah routine, which is certainly classic. Norumbega Harmony is sometimes Folk and sometimes Unclassifiable. Norman Blake, in addition to being sometimes Folk and sometimes Country, is also sometimes Books and Spoken. (How's that?) And so on.


As usual, I've been involved in a bunch of weird musical stuff. A little while back we (Choral Arts) were involved in Christmas at Ford's Theater. Ford's is going to close soon til November 2008, so they were taping the Christmas 2007 show.   But it sure was surrealistic. "Sleighbells ring, are you listening?"--in June-- with soap flakes falling from
above. And it sure did reinforce again how fake TV is. The alleged leader of the free world was there and they asked him whether he had finished his Christmas shopping. Before the show started, they told everybody not to be alarmed if they introduced somebody who had already been on stage. Or somebody who never showed up. Or if they stopped and redid a number. Some of what we did was taped Friday for the program Sunday. Etc.

Olivia Newton-John was there and she sang--directly at Mr. Bush, it seemed to me, a song called "Let Me Be An Instrument of Peace". A little late, I thought.

And one of the things on this Christmas program was that well known seasonal song, Xanadu. Never heard of it? Neither had I. But it seems it was a big hit for Olivia around 1980. I told everybody it was picked since Mr. Bush wanted to prove how up-to-date he was.

I think I read that it was a show about how a god or other powerful being convinced an artist to start a disco roller rink. Does that sound close?

Anyway, they said they wanted 10 people-- (of the 30 of us from Choral Arts who were in the show)--for that song. But it turned out they'd given us the wrong words. And the wrong notes. And none of us really knew how it went. So one of us got it off the Net, so we could hear how the hit went. But then when Olivia and her arranger got there, they didn't want the hit version, they wanted the live version she had done a few years ago. Fortunately they also only needed 3, instead of 10 people. So rather than start to guess at how the song they wanted was to go--since it had only a tenuous connection with the sheet music they'd given us-- (at 10:30 at night, having been there since 5), I was able to leave. 2 gals and a guy wound up backing her up (from the balcony)--(no TV time, I believe), and the tenor wasn't heard at all. So it's obvious there was no place for a baritone.

But at least I did get Olivia's autograph for Jan. Olivia's a good person--has done a lot for breast cancer victims, being one herself. But her manager had a cow when one of our group took a picture of Olivia. Manager threatened that our group would never work on the Ford's Theater gig again. (Actually, I can live with that--not that I think the manager has the clout to push it through.)

It's a crazy business--sure glad I'm not trying to make a living at it.