I never thought I was any great shakes as a singer, but I used to get together with friends and take my turn. Then someone told me I sound like Garrison Keillor. Now I only sing at home alone.

I love his story-telling, and the radio dramas, and the fake commercials, and the show in general, and the movie about it. And he gets all the best singers to come on the show and perform. But then he sings along with them, and I just want to scream.

There's a lot of that in American music... a kind of compulsion to spoil anything that's too beautiful. Choral groups will sing beautiful songs, in thrilling, perfect harmony, but then they'll distort the melody at a certain point and make you want to puke. And in pop music there's always some neanderthal beating a drum with a stick while someone with a beautiful voice is singing. You might as well have a dog barking during the song. It's in movies, too. There'll be all these attractive, interesting characters behaving just like real human beings, and then Woody Allen appears. And audiences love it. It's as if the beauty is too much to bear and they have to have an annoying buzzer to break the tension.