The lecture below is not mandatory. Get to the good stuff then read through the rant below if there is nobody in your immediate proximity to  yell at  you. If you're in the music biz you need to be reading these. If you have a favorite please share it in the comment section!

Seth Godin's Blog:  Forward thinking and constantly deconstructing traditional ways of doing things - even a "don't follow leaders" type like me could fall in line behind this guy.
The Lefsetz Letter: Not just because he's got both feet in the future but because he understands that we bond with music when it becomes a part of our story by affirming it or adding a new twist to it. So he tells the stories, writing about life, music and how they intertwine. He also devotes whole pieces to comments from readers and he has some heavy-hitters chiming in. Who get equal space with real people, not preferential treatment. 
Unsprung Media - Unsprung Wisdom:  Bruce Warila on music, marketing, media and other stuff you need to know.
Music Think TankThe cool thing about this one is that it is kind of a digest of comments from other blogs so if your time and attention span are short you can give this one a daily hit for some new info and things to think about.
New Music Strategies: Just what the name says! Very informative.
Inside Music Media: Want to know the real deal about radio, how it works and why it no longer works? This is the one is required. Jerry Del Colliano was in radio and edited the influential Inside Radio magazine. Now he's a prof at USC teaching music industry classes.
 John Gorman's Media Blog: more wise words on radio and how it will/won't fit into the music dissemination model of the future
Lee Abrams' blog: The dream that was XM declines into tight playists and a probable future with (ultra conservative programmer-corporate exec) Mel Karmazin at the helm. So sad. This blog has gone dormant as he left XM to partner up with Randy Michaels at Tribune to do...errrrr..newspapers and TV (yeah right). But the archives should keep you occupied for a few months.

The Rant: here's some tough love for ya. Go for it.
Yeah, I know. You can put yer heart, soul and bank account into making that CD then radio will play it and people will go to the record store and buy it. Yeah, and a fairy princess will wave her magic wand and fly you up the soundscan chart for more than one week with no effort on your part. Sorry, but the 90/10-10/90 rule is the new game: the one that says a musician used to do 10% of the marketing oriented work and the label did 90% then it flipped to the other way musician/management 90/label, if there is one, 10. There are a significant amount of musicians who realize this, but there are also a signficiant amount who don't and some of them are making incredible music that slides to oblivion because the 90% of the work didn't get covered. Learn, ask for help, learn some more. We are all hacking our way through this new tangled field together and the music is worth the work. Remember, if your head is in the sand your tail is sticking up waiting to get kicked.

 Eric Norberg, who writes for A/C Radio.com and publishes a music newsletter for Adult Contemporary stations ( A/C Music Research newsletter ) nails the reason that "hook testing" doesn't work and is totally irrelevant as far as evaluating listener acceptance of music. He is something of a cult figure because he is brazen enough to affirm two things that counter industry group-think. 1. Adult women like current music 2.Human beings like to hear other human beings they can emotionally connect with on the radio (whatta concept). Real people, not fake announcer voices or voicetracks.  He works with Adult Contemporary stations but this is equally applicable to Smooth Jazz and AAA listeners/stations

Obviously the large ownership groups have too much invested in their in-house research staffs who make a lot of money doing this kind of music testing. Plus, it's such a rote process that they can do it in their sleep. Turn music to numbers, upload it to the station/client, and who cares if the results are accurate. This may not be much of a consolation if you are a musician who has been told that your song doesn't "test well". You'll just have to find a way to get it heard besides those 20 or so radio stations. But you can grin to your self knowing this: (from Norberg):

  there are two major drawbacks with this: (1) In order for a piece of a song to work in identifying a song for a listener (a "hook"), the listener has to have heard it enough to recognize the fragment, which means that playing it enough to get that familiarity is risky business for a radio station, and (2) hook-based testing puts the listener in an artificial listening situation (auditoriums, and the reactions of others nearby, make it even worse), and forces "intellectualization" of an "emotional" response; even an effort to be truthful in this situation will result in results which do not match behavior.

Last month, I pointed out that conventional hook-based music testing has built-in permanent problems, which make it important not to base major music decisions on such results alone. The key problems I identified for you are:

The subjects know they are being tested when they are being tested. We want behavior, they give us opinions.

The songs are not presented as they hear them on the radio. The listening situation is artificial.

This doesnt mean we cant use callout and auditoriums, but we have to recognize and take into account the limitations. And, since our goal is accurate information, it encourages us to find other ways we can confide in to get better music data upon which to base our decisions.

The pieces he wrote for the A/C Radio website are really good reads:

How To Avoid Research Minefields
Confidence in Your Music Testing

so when ya get told ya don't test well just grin and think to yourself "I know better than that" and walk away..then get your music to the people any way you can!

You can also read my little piece on Smooth Jazz Brunch Shows on A/C stations. It really angered a big time power weilding SJ Group PD, who sent in a nastygram but shortly therafter lost his job (and his power base). And So It Goes...I thought it was one of my tamer rants, actually
Jazz Brunch Shows on A/C Radio

From despair.com  go there, sometimes having a bad attitude is a good thing

So I am sitting here, deadline looming, reading other people's blogs and newsletters to put off the inevitable process of facing the page when I come across this from one of my favorite writers - Barbara Cawthorne Crafton's almost daily message on Geraniumfarm.org

Writing interrupts these pleasurable tasks annoyingly. It broods over my domesticities like a reproachful vulture, letting out an occasional squawk so I will know it's still there, still unfinished, still overdue. Well, I want to have a life, I tell it petulantly. Don't I get to have a nice life, a nice home? What am I supposed to do, sit here at the computer all day and all night?

My computer monitor gives me an ironic look. "It doesn't look like you're in much danger of doing that," it says.

"I write on the train," I tell it.

"Not very much, you don't. Not lately. Mostly you read home improvement magazines and the New York Times."

"Well, the Times is necessary reading for a good preacher."

"Uh-huh. And This Old House?"

"Well, you never know what will be germane."

Odd, this collision of my nesting frenzy and my true love. They're competing with each other right now, criticizing each other, dismissing each other's importance in my life. They each grab one of my hands and pull.

They really shouldn't argue. They are both fine things, and a life should have room for more than one fine thing. That elusive balance, which will stop this feeling that I'd rather be somewhere else, will come again. But it will not stay for long: I am a creature of prodigious effort followed by genuine sloth, so I always try to make hay while the sun shines.

If it were not for my rule of life, I would be pulled apart by my warring loves. If I didn't sit down to pray and then to write, without asking myself whether or not I felt like it, there would be no end to the reasons I'd find not to do either. I need to get as many of my tasks on autopilot as I can, in order to get it all in.

A rule isn't an external curb on your freedom. It's a choice you've made to protect the things you've decided are worth protecting. Nobody makes you follow it, and you don't really make yourself follow it, either. It's just there. And you just do it. And, before you know it, you've done it.

Affirmation that it is time to put the nose to the grindstone and fingers to keyboard it seems. Her "Almost Daily E-mo's are always inspiring and full of insight" for more go here: Daily E-Mo from Geranium Farm

Until I get up and running you can check out Barbara Crafton's E-mos because they are beautiful, inspiring, and I wish I could write like that! Daily E-mo from Geranium Farm

or read the prologue to Tim Dorsey's "Orange Crush"
Read this now!!!

When it comes to all things green the coolest site out there is YouGrowGirl.com
and you can read my stuff, and some other wonderful music writers at
SmoothViews.com and AbyssJazz

It's way too cold here..time to go cover the bougainvillea, put the cat on my head and turn out the lights. Spring is coming, here's a shirt to set the mood:
From the YouGrowGirl online store

This is the chorey for the Essential Step combos w. cardio intervals. Feel free to steal 'em and work 'em. All 32 count self reversing, they are not tapless.

travel knee R (4)
1 jack on floor (4)
1/2 L (L off end) (4)
cross 2x (8)
Knee center (L-Center) 4
Repeater..any type (8)  
repeat starting w. travel knee L

(vertical or facing end..this is a 64)
double knee ski (or repeater) 2x
over top Jack 2x or jump rope 4x
up-lunge R-lunge L-exit front
up lunge L Lunge R exit back
5 hamcurl repeater, tap down go over
(repeat on other side of step)

horizontal

7 knee repeater
up lunge 6x (split basic but with 6 lunges instead of 2)
Kick on step
walk 3 and kick on floor
walk, run or shuffle around the step 8 counts
L step on both ends