Not really! I think Glen Hansard is great. I saw "Once" early this year and was so impressed. The music was simple and organic but fresh and really inspired. It's what I think any good songwriter would dream to do. I went to see him in concert as well. But there's that song "When Your Mind's Made Up" and that's why "damn that Glen Hansard!' I've always wanted to write a really catchy song in 5/4 time and sure enough Glen Hansard did it before me. The last one I know of is "Take Five" from Dave Brubeck's Time Out album in 1961. Actually the first song I ever recorded in a studio (26 years ago!) was in 5/4 time. It wasn't very catchy though. It was pretty crappy. "When Your Mind's Made Up" is really excellent I think.

Speaking of Dave Brubeck's Time Out. I was talking with Ed Stephens, our bass player on the way to a gig last week, that I think that album is really what ruined jazz in this country. The album was brilliant, don't get me wrong, it will as Ed said, "be around for centuries." Which is obviously not true of most music. But the point being that that album was so clever, writing catchy interesting tunes in odd time signatures, and so brilliant that it started to make other jazz musicians believe that they had to be clever too. Clever and intellectual. Which gave birth to the jazz that followed which was clever and intellectual but not all that fun and groovin' by comparison. Not that I think there's anything wrong with the jazz that came after. But I think the musicians lost the audience. And that's when the audience for jazz in America really started to fall off. Jazz musicians where I grew up usually blamed rock for their downfall. I think they did it themselves.

So that's my two cents. And here's my point about Glen Hansard. It took a folk singer from Dublin to come up with the next really great song in 5/4 time. 47 years later. Damn that guy!