When the boss is away, the music will play.

I think to best define my July's at work are called, post-Gala depression: a race from December to the 3rd Saturday in May for our annual fundraiser, followed by an annual June sabbatical of vacation. I'm officially back in the saddle, but with Linda (the boss) and Ryan (curator) gone this week, it's been way too quiet in the Biggs offices. One way to liven up the joint? Music, of course, but not in the sort of "this is giving me a headache, the music is too loud in Abercrombie" kind of way. I'm not up to date with technology and don't own one of those portable ipod speakers, so I turn to on-line streaming, as it's free and I'm always surprised as to what is coming up next.

As for my radio click, Pandora is an old faithful, just type in who you're into at the moment and bam, you've got yourself a customized play list of songs by that artist and by other artists similar in nature. This was created by the Music Genome Project, a group of musicians and music technologists that study and analyze the DNA of songs, which includes everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony.

As much as I love Pandora, my Phil Collins playlist was getting kind of stale. So I was exhilarated to discover the blog, I Listen to Everything, in a magazine this morning. It's written by music lover Diana Miller, who is the talent executive at the Carson Daly Show. She has the awesome day job of booking the live performances for the show. This gal just plain loves music and is open to everything, rock to rap, unknown indie to the latest Britney. I Listen to Everything is for the people who might be sick of their current ipod tracks and are looking for something new, but need a littler steering in the right direction. Along the right side of her blog you can listen to her play list, which consists of all the music she's blogged about. The word mix doesn't even begin to describe the mixture of music in the play list. As for her blog entries she does artist profiles on bands she's booked and bands she is currently obsessed with. Her approach is not typical of most music blogs, as most tend to be theoretical..."you should listen to this because of his...blah blah blah." and leaving you with the feeling, "Am I even cool enough to listen to this?" In I Listen to Everything, Diana serves almost like a personal cheerleader saying "Come on, put in the ear plugs and rock out!" So if you might be a bit nervous or intimidated by high-end music critics, don't worry and take the plunge.

Music is fun, it sounds good and deserves to be enjoyed. Intern Kath and I have been jamming all morning. Maybe the boss will take off next week too.... on that note, I'm going to get back to work.