Wyatt Preul has me hooked on The Current! I've been listening to little else other than Minnesota Public Radio's The Current since Wyatt turned me on to it a week ago. It's very much like WYEP, the station I listened to around the clock when I lived in Pittsburgh for five years in the late 90's. Both the Current and WYEP have live streams, which is wonderful for public funded stations like these to increase listeners and donations.
The Current (unlike WYEP) has an excellent playlist service that is continually updated. Having real-time information on what's playing is so important in discovering new artists. Thanks to that service I've discovered several new artists, one being Chris Smither. The guy's been around forever, but I only learned about him through The Current. His newest album is called Leave the Light On, and it was the first album I purchased in over a month.
In other music news, during our trip to New Hampshire last weekend I purchased a new accordion. We went to the Accordion Connection where I had the pleasure of meeting Arthur Welch, the owner of the store and legendary Accordionist Phenom. Arthur completely dissassembled my accordion to see what would be required to restore it. (Here's a pic of my old friend taken at DevTeach from my Montreal hotel room a couple of years ago.) It would have cost almost $4000 to overhaul my accordion to its original condition. I could see where every dollar would have gone as we examined the reeds, bellows, keypads and various internal switches, so he wasn't jacking me around. When it was done, I realized that while my affections for the 60-year-old accordion are genuine, I'm not a complete idiot. I couldn't spend $4000 bucks to restore an accordion!
While deciding what to do I happened to look over to the accordion shelves and a used Diamond Accordion caught my eye. Apparently it had arrived only a few days earlier, given a thorough inspection and placed on the shelf the day before. It didn't even have a price tag on it yet. My heart missed a beat when I picked it up and I was hooked. I didn't want to spend the money for that accordion either, no matter how much I was lusting for it. I had no intention of buying a new accordion that weekend; I just wanted my old accordion checked over. My wife, however, was insistent that I buy it. Fortunately the Diamond was much less than $4000. I won't say how much, but in computer dollars, it would have been a kick-ass laptop.
The Current, Chris Smithers and a new accordion. Life is good.