• It's time for holiday music to get the mood - or the party - started right. No muzak or Mitch Miller here, mates. So allow me to share my highlights of this season's funkiest new Christmas CDs. Cut right to the chase of the bitchin'-est of the bunch: the power rawk girl-power duo of Evil Beaver and its Smells Like Christmas Spirit on the Johann's Face record label.
Undoubtedly Dvorak’s Cello Concerto is the most famous piece of its type ever written. In fact, composers such as Brahms – upon hearing Dvorak’s piece – lamented that they hadn’t written a cello concerto themselves.
It was a great idea by the Blackthorn Pub & Eatery. Host local bands on four consecutive Sundays in late summer, record their sets, compile the best performances on CD, and sell it as a benefit for two charities, Gilda’s Club of the Quad Cities and the Mississippi Valley Blues Society’s BlueSKool program.
• My favorite new CD of the moment goes to Rick Altizer and his power -pop masterpiece All Tie Zer. Bearing the imprint of the Not Lame Recordings, a Colorado label serving up the best in indie pop, this new album is candy for the ears with its "Dear God"-era XTC meets Tom Petty cleverness and melancholy melodies.
Zuill Bailey was a rambunctious child. The cello changed him. Bailey's first encounter with the cello was at a symphony concert as a young child. Running through the halls, he "smashed into a girl holding a cello," breaking the instrument, he recalled.
• The "big five" major music companies - Sony, EMI, BMG, Universal, and the Warner Music Group - have laid down their swords and come together to rush the release this Tuesday of America: A Tribute to Heroes, a not-for-profit CD, VHS, or DVD documenting the somber benefit broadcast from September 21.
With a robust musical tradition to draw on, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra (QCSO) has released its first full-length CD, an assembly of movements and snippets drawn from recordings by Augustana’s WVIK public-radio station.
• The new independent film Dean Quixote is an indie-rock love letter, with an appearance by Dayton, Ohio's Guided by Voices and a tastefully selected soundtrack. Just released on the spinART Records label, it features the band's "If We Wait" alongside Olivia Tremor Control, Beachwood Sparks, The Minders, Bevis Frond, Bettie Serveert, and Orchestra Fantastique, a new side project from Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo.
One of the primary goals of any artist, especially a jazz musician, is to have a distinctive style. Knowledgeable jazz musicians and even fans can hear just a few bars of Clark Terry, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, and many others and easily recognize who is playing.
• I let out a holler and a hoot over the smashing success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack at the 35th annual Country Music Association Awards in Nashville, as the set won best album and single for "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" by the Soggy Bottom Boys featuring vocalist Dan Tyminski.

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