This is very cool. Raya Yarbrough sent this video from Comic-Con 2009 in San Diego to me months ago and I'm just getting around to watching it now. I actually got a little emotional. James is such a sweetheart!



For those that care, I am planning on interviewing Bear again as he's got several projects in the works.

Click here to see my interview with Bear McCreary, Battlestar Galactica composer.

A note to my classical/concert musician friends:

If you are into performing music for not just folks in concert halls, please do yourself a favor and check out the organization Classical Revolution. They might put on shows near you.

A note to my composer friends:

Check out CMASH, a Bay Area collective of musicians and composers.

READ MY ARTICLE HERE

I wasn’t going to broach the subject of Adam Lambert's "coming out" into mainstream pop culture post-American Idol , but after hearing and reading reactions all across the board I had to get my two cents in. I, sometimes painfully, sat through most of the American Music Awards and can’t believe the media is getting their panties in a bundle over this. Nevermind, I can believe it, that’s what the media does. I guess I’m part of that, eh?

In the midst of all this Prop-8 nonsense, I do believe it is the double standard that is to blame. But there are two double standards at work here: that of gender and that of sexuality. As many have said before me the Britney Spears/Madonna kiss was okay with the media. They are both straight women. If Melissa Etheridge pulled what Adam Lambert did, I think there would have been a similar noise. Blatant homosexuality is threatening to mainstream media. This we know.

READ MORE OF MY ARTICLE AND SEE VIDEOS OF RUFUS WAINWRIGHT, MATT ALBER, IVRI LIDER, CAZWELL, LEVI KREIS & THE SCISSOR SISTERS

Through out my life, I often think about the fact that if it were not for Adolph Hitler, I would not be here. Plain and simple: my grandmother would probably still be in Germany and my Grandfather would have married another pretty Jewish lady in Los Angeles.

If it were not for the Holocaust, we would also not have any of the beautiful and inspirational art and music featured in They Left a Light: Masterpieces from Nazi Prison Camps at the East Bay Jewish Community Center on Sunday evening, October 18th.

This performance will be an educational experience with narration and a multimedia production performed by some of the Bay Area’s top classical musicians, including Susan Waterfall, piano and narrator; Jeremy Cohen, violin; Burke Schuchmann, cello, and Erin Neff, soprano.

By nature, human beings find ways to make beauty out of the darkness. Olivier Messiaen, composer of The Quartet for the End of Time, Sunday evening's featured piece, was a Catholic French composer who lived in the Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp during the Holocaust as a prisoner of war...

READ MORE OF MY ARTICLE HERE

It seems like famous people are dropping like flies lately. But there is one person's life that I'd like particularly like to celebrate: that of Ellie Greenwich, songwriter of such hits as "Chapel of Love," "Da Do Ron Ron," "Be My Baby" "Leader of the Pack," "River Deep - Mountain High" and dozens more. Greenwich was part of the songwriting hit machine in the Brill Building in New York City.

At a very young age, Greenwich and Carole King blazed a path for women in the music industry at that time dominated by men. Women hadn't really been on the creative production side of the music industry at that point, with few exceptions they had been mostly singers or administrative types. Greenwich found great success as a songwriter and partnered with her husband Jeff Barry. Greenwich and Barry wrote songs for the popular girl groups of the early '60s like the The Ronettes, The Crystals and The Shangri-Las.

In an interview with NPR, Greenwich reflected on being a woman and working in the production side of the music industry,

It wasn't that accepted back then, a female being in that end of the business.

She even had a little bit of difficulty working with other female artists;

At first it was like, 'Well, who does she think she is, giving us orders here or telling us what to do?' But on the other end, if you were very open to them, they saw you could be their friend, and then it became an asset to be a woman dealing with girl groups.

Ellie Greenwich gave us dozens of hit songs, like silly bubble gum pop with nonsensical choruses, and some with heart felt meaning. Let's remember her as she held her own against the British Invasion and paved the way for women who wanted to have a creative role in the music industry.

Ellie Greenwich died Wednesday August 24th of a heart attack in New York City at the age of 68.

This is my favorite Ellie Greenwich not-so-famous tune: "Maybe I Know" performed by Lesley Gore (I fell in love with this tune when my junior high performed the musical "Leader of the Pack" based on the music of Ellie Greenwich):



And just for fun, this is the same tune performed by They Might be Giants.



Read more about Ellie Greenwich and watch more videos here at Pitchfork.

Hello readers!

I am happy to report that I have been accepted to be a music writer for examiner.com and that I will be GETTING PAID in CASH MONEY (through paypal) for my writing. This blog will not die, I promise, I mean where else am I going to share Muppet videos at 5 AM in the morning???

I will be linking everything I write for examiner.com to this blog, so you don't have to do anything different, just click away. Please note that I get paid by the amount of traffic I get. And no, refreshing 100 times a day will not make a difference. Once a day, or whatever you do, is fabulous.

My first story is an interview with Bear McCreary, Battlestar Gallactica's composer. I lucked out with having friends in such awesome places. I'm really happy with my first journalist interview (which is pretty different than ethnographic ones) and thank you very much to my brother and those of you fabulous people that edited it before I uploaded it.

Here is a sneak peak at the upcoming documentary.

Good things are starting to happen here at alwaysmoretohear (including free press passes! Why didn't I think of that years ago??!!!) so please keep checking back. There will always be more to hear and I will keep sharing the good tunes with you.

Thanks again,

Jamie

p.s. oh, and I get to see Bruce Springsteen with my dad and brother tonight. How much better can today get?

The first Bollywood movie I ever saw was Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India. After seeing that movie I fell in love with Indian film and popular music.  But Lagaan's soundtrack, by A.R. Rahman is still my favorite.  Last week his new movie Slumdog Millionaire,  from the director who brought us Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, was released in the United States. The soundtrack also features M.I.A.'s Grammy 2009 nominated single "Paper Planes."

Listen, O my friend,

What is this fear you have?

The earth is ours

And so is the sky.