30 years ago this week...

We lost one of the most achingly beautiful voices humanity ever knew with the untimely death of Karen Carpenter.   Of her death, famed songwriter Burt Bacharach said, "my songs have just lost the most beautiful voice they ever had." 
This is her singing "For All We Know" on the Andy Williams Show, Feb. 13, 1971 at the age of 20:

I wold LOVE to be able to play this well...

From one of the best movies you've probably never seen: "August Rush". I resisted it myself for awhile, and kicked myself for that when I finally watched it.

Even better about this scene: These two have NO clue they're actually father & son.

The next Billy Joel...?

My 7-YO son Colin at his recital this past Saturday night. ALL the kids studying under this music teacher performed - some were quite good! After Colin got done "freelancing" (which had me tearing out what's left of my hair), he got down to business:
I have NO idea where this "hamminess" of his comes from... ;-D Check out the FULL "performance" on YouTube... (link when my wife gets to uploading it...)

On edit: My wife WUSSED! she, too, cut out the free-lance portion...but it's here.

On FURTHER edit(9/25/09): She un-wussed. You can see the free-lance portion here.

Now HERE'S some talent...

Something non-political, for once! :-)
This is Ryan's friend Michael playing Beethoven's "Fur Elise". Bear in mind - Michael is 9 years old.


If you're getting this by e-mail, come to the blog to see the video - this kid's something else!

"See the Good"

This is a song I heard just a couple weeks ago and utterly fell in love with. It was written by my friends Danielle Kane (nee Bixby) and Rick Vandivier, and I performed it(with a few tweaks, as I'm nowhere NEAR the guitarist that Rick is)at the 3/29/09 service at Unity of Fremont, CA. So here's my version: