The last few days have been music to my eyes, mostly because of a couple of young artists who sing with their paints. Artists you should know about.

It all started when I got an e-mail from my mother-in-law, forwarding along a link she had received from her brother that turned out to be a blog created by his son. Most blogs are made up almost entirely of words but with a picture here and there. This blog is quite the opposite, consisting almost entirely of fairly high quality images of very high quality original art.

Now those of you who are quick with the whole "neighbor's nephew's sister-in-law's third cousin's best friend" thing will have figured out that the artist of which I speak is actually my wife's cousin, and therefore mine by marriage. And you may also think you have figured out that the reason I speak well of his art is because of this familial relationship. Au contraire, say I, and I say it with gusto.

I admit to a bias here and there, but when it comes to praising work simply because I know and like the person who created it, I draw the line pretty firmly. Where would I be as an honest assessor of words and music and performance if I allowed myself to be swayed by affection or admiration? The truth is that I deeply and genuinely like many of the artists with whom I work, but if their work requires the hard truth I deliver it.

And so it is with young Mr. Kitch (aka Dallas Teague, a name that pays homage to Donald Teague, the artist's late maternal grandfather, who was himself a world-class artist and whose paintings you can still buy today, assuming you are on good terms with your banker).

So mosey on over to his blog, admire his work, and remember that you heard about him here first. He is already excellent, and as he continues to paint and mature and be less distracted by homework (a joke you will only get if you look at his pictures), he will get better and better.

As for the second young artist, who is really, really young (12, I think, putting her a little more than a decade behind Bryan), you may have already heard of her. She's good enough and famous enough already to have stopped using her last name and be billed simply as Akiane (pronounced ah-KEE-ah-nah). And I'm willing to give her that, because she is truly a phenom.

She has, after all, been on Oprah (So has my brother, but that's a story for another time.), major newspapers around the world have printed stories about her, major magazines have done the same, there are video interviews of her on YouTube, and now I'm blogging about her. What more could be required to get her to the very top?

You may be skeptical when you look at her art and read what she has written, because it doesn't seem possible that one so young could do work that is so mature, so beyond her age. She has an answer for you: God. And that's an answer that is hard to argue with, especially when she says it and when you look at her work.

I'll write more about Akiane later, and perhaps more about Bryan, but for now let me point you to a song I wrote with Steve Eaton a few years ago that talks about "inspired" art. Go to the Do Good Music MySpace page and the song Living In The River should start playing automatically. Listen to the words, and then, like Bryan and Akiane, start living in the river.

Christmas and New Year's are special days, each for their own reasons and in their own ways, and both of them have their own kind of music. Christmas has all those carols and jingling bells, and New Year's has Auld Lang Syne. Seems like we always use music in the seasons of life, usually to help us celebrate them in a way that words alone can't.

This past holiday season held more for me than just Christmas and New Year's, though--it also held a wedding and a funeral. I officiated at both, and music was involved.

The wedding came first, in San Francisco. It was a lovely ceremony, with a beautiful bride, a handsome groom, smiling families and happy guests. A professional pianist, who makes much of his living by playing his portable Korg keyboard at weddings and corporate parties, was on hand. The bride had given him a list of songs to play for the time before and during the ceremony and a list to play during the cocktail hour. He was quite good, and the music added just the right touch.

The funeral was as different as, well, as different as a funeral is from a wedding. Somewhat symbolically, I thought, that service was also on the other side of the country, in Miami. It was just three days after the wedding but in a different year. The bride and groom from the wedding have now been married for less than a week. The husband and wife from the funeral (it was for the wife) had been married for more than 65 years. Still, the music added just the right touch.

Some of the music was used as a background in a slide show put together by the family, and the songs just worked. But the music that touched everyone's heart was provided by the widower who was saying goodbye to his beloved wife.

His name is Earl Law, and his late wife, Judy, was my father's first cousin. Theirs was a love that, as I said in the service, the world was privileged to behold. It was one I believe they were created to share with each other, and one way Earl shared his love was through singing. At the funeral service, he sang to Judy one more time.

He is 89 now, and he stood up and sang (a cappella) two verses of I Love You Truly in a voice that is still a pleasure to hear and with a feeling that you can only imagine.

Later I asked him about his music career, and he told me he first sang "professionally" at the age of 12. Music was always his life--it was never his livelihood--and for him it is like breathing. He cannot not sing. And what a joy for me to have heard him sing when he was younger and had a very strong tenor voice as well as now, on this sad but beautiful occasion.

Weddings, funerals, love, relationships, family, forever. All reasons to do good music.

Quick, what's the most famous thing about Augusta, Georgia? If you're a golfer, even if you are musician who is a golfer, the answer is The Masters. It is one of the four "majors" of men's professional golf, and, some say, the toughest ticket in all of sports. Harder to get into than the NBA finals, the World Series, the Superbowl, or even the Kentucky Derby.

If you're not a golfer but you are a big fan of James Brown and his music, you might say the most famous thing about Augusta is that it was the hometown of James Brown. Now it is where he will be buried, with the funeral being held at 8500 seat James Brown arena. The actual burial will, presumably, be elsewhere. Al Sharpton will officiate. (I would have been happy to officiate, but there are two reasons why I couldn't: 1. I'm officiating at a wedding in San Francisco on the same day, and 2. I wasn't asked.

All that notwithstanding, James Brown contributed a great deal to the world of music. I don't agree with the pundit who is suggesting Mr. Brown receive a Nobel Prize, but he does deserve our admiration and appreciation. He made a difference, and the difference he made was a good one.

Mr. Brown died on Christmas morning, 2006, at the age of 73. He had many nicknames, including The Godfather of Soul, but the one he seemed to be most proud of was The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business. I'm not sure if that referred to his physical activity on the stage or what he did behind the scenes, or just how often he worked. In any case, working hard is almost always a recipe for success, and as far as music is concerned, James Brown was a success.

All that hard work apparently didn't translate into a successful home life, seeing that James was married three or four times. I say three or four because it is now not clear whether or not he was really married to his "widow," who does claim they were married legally in 2004. We'll see.

But it is not Mr. Brown's private life most people know or care about. We know he made a lot of music -- even a lot of good music -- and we know his impact on music will be felt for decades to come. For all of that I'm sorry to see him leave, but I'm glad he's finally getting a rest. May he rest in peace.

That's Merry Christmas in Hawaiian, and in spite of all the fun I had as a kid playing in the snow and drinking hot chocolate to fight the frosty air, I'd just as soon be celebrating in Hawaii as anywhere. I'm pretty sure Santa Claus goes there last and spends the rest of the winter working on his tan.

Whether you are in the snow or on the sands, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas. Spend at least part of it with family and friends, spend at least part of it listening to good music, and spend at least part of it remembering what Christmas is really all about in the first place.

I know the wise men didn't really show up while Jesus was still sleeping in a feed trough, and I even know that the Bible doesn't say there were three of them. (We get that because there are three gifts named, so we figure there must have been three wise men.) I also know that there is something wonderful in the fact that the first visitors to the Good Shepherd were lowly shepherds. I can imagine one of them saying to the others, "They told us he was some kind of King, but I think he looks like one of us!"

But all those facts and more are unimportant compared to knowing who that baby was, why he was born, and what he did with his life.

That is worth celebrating, worth being joyful and merry about, and worth a few moments of your time and a few words of thanks.

My Christmas wish for you is simply this: that this season will give you a deeper appreciation for God, for those people you love, and for all people everywhere. If that happens, you will have a Mele Kalikimaka indeed!

I was walking out of a fun little Palo Alto cafe yesterday after having lunch with a friend (also a music biz guy) when I spotted an abandoned Wall Street Journal. The Marketplace section was on top, and in the middle above the fold were pictures of two pretty gorgeous models. But that's not what caught my eye.

The headline that grabbed my attention was this: In a Turnabout, Record Industry Releases MP3s.

So I picked up the paper, brought it home, and read with interest the story that starts like this:

The music industry has long resisted selling music in the MP3 format, which lacks the copy protections that prevent songs from being duplicated endlessly. But now, Blue Note Records and its marquee artist, jazz-pop singer Norah Jones, are selling her latest single through Yahoo Inc. as an MP3—despite the risk that may add to piracy problems.

It took a little bit of looking around at Yahoo!, but I finally found the song and, being your dutiful blogger/reporter (and a Norah Jones fan), I bought the song. Same price as iTunes, 99¢, and a bit rate of 192K. In what I can only think of as somebody trying hard not to leave any money on the table, the folks who are selling the Relient K MP3 through Y! Music have two versions available: 128K for 99¢ and a 320K "High Quality" version for $1.25.

Some of you out there can probably tell the difference between a 128K MP3 and a 320K MP3, and if you can you are either listening through incredible headphones or you have names like Spot or Rover. But what's 26 cents between friends?

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that Record Labels, who have a very strong vested interest in keeping things exactly like they were in 1986, are experimenting with selling MP3s that do not have DRM (digital rights management to the techies and lawyers, copy protection to most of us) embedded in them.

Granted, they are only dipping a toe or two in the water, and they are doing that with Jones, Relient K, Jessica Simpson, Jesse McCartney and Panic at the Disco. An interesting mix that speaks to the philosophies of various labels.

(How many of you thought Panic at the Disco was on an indie label, by the way? If you look at their MySpace site you'll see their label name is Fueled By Ramen, which certainly sounds indie, and you'll see that their "label type" is indie, but FBR is part of Atlantic Records, which itself is part of Warner Music Group. They are no more independent than a married man on a business trip who "forgets" his wedding ring.)

And of course that's not the point either. The point is that Record Labels are finally admitting, in a very cautious, very measured way, that it really wasn't piracy that has been killing them for the last 10 years.

By the way, one of the fun things on the Y! Music site where you can buy these unprotected MP3s is some language that says, "Want to know why MP3 downloads are way cooler?" The first reason they give is that these files will play on any MP3 player, including an iPod. Now that's market power. And a very soft slap at Apple, whose iTunes songs will not play on any MP3 player.

But that's also not the point. The point is that Record Labels, who have leaned far too heavily on lawyers and far too lightly on consumers, IMHO, now understand that DRM doesn't stop piracy but does help technology companies (Apple) control the music world. And they don't like it.

Maybe, just maybe, those of who make music and those of us who want to buy MP3s will benefit from this great awakening. And maybe the Record Labels will too.

Quick, name the winner of American Idol from season three. Give up? Her name is Fantasia Barrino, although she now just goes by Fantasia, because I'm sure it is written somewhere that to be a true diva more than one name is not allowed. Besides, we kind of like that one name thing in our idols: we talk about Kelly and Ruben and Taylor as if we know them.

But that's not the point. The point is, I'm not sure I'm ready for another idol.

Take Fantasia, for instance. Now don't get me wrong, this girl can sing. She also gets props from me because she's apparently stepped up to life and met it with faith and determination. But in the vocal department, how good is she? The allmusic.com review of Free Yourself, her debut album, claims she is not bad but also not great. The review was written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, and you can read it at allmusic.com or you can read it on iTunes. Or you can read the part I'm interested in here:

...And that reveals Fantasia's biggest weakness, which is part of the inherent flaw of American Idol: it rewards contestants who put on a show of being a great singer instead of actually being a great singer.

So what do you think? Is American Idol more about Simon than it is about finding a great singer? That is to say, is our reward for watching it the entertainment we get through the process rather than finding a star at the end of the rainbow? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

Don't fool yourselves, Kids. American Idol is not about identifying the best singer, it is about selling Coca-Cola and entertaining us with everything from embarrassing moments for some really bad singers to rare moments of triumph by some really good singers. Throw in the cat fights at the judges' table, the sniping between Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell, the back stories about the ten finalists, and of course the opportunity to vote and you've got plenty of things to keep you talking and tuning in.

That's not a bad thing, at least as long as we're looking for entertainment and not a singer to idolize.

Music is everywhere. You may not think that headline is much of a revelation, but if you work with music in any way it should at least make you happy.

Why? Because somebody writes that music and somebody performs it and somebody records it and somebody mixes it and somebody masters it and somebody manufactures it in some way. Somebody else chooses it and somebody puts it on the radio or in an elevator or behind a commercial or in a movie or television show or uses it for music on hold.

Even talk radio has music, and as far as I know there are only two television shows that do not have a theme song, and I can only think of one of those. What is the other one?

Anyway, I'm encouraged by this "music is everywhere" idea. That means that some of the songs I have already helped write might just sneak into people's ears somehow, and it means that if I think about places where music is I might be able to contribute to songs specifically for those places.

And so can you. You can be one of those people I mentioned earlier and you can help bring music to life in some way. And when you do, you will be a somebody.