"Don't you mean Carmen?"

"Nope. Carmi. Like my car only backwards."

"Never heard of it."

"The musical or the town?"

"The anything."

Well, to tell the truth, I'm not all that surprised. On the other hand, I kind of am. It seems like everywhere I go someone has heard of Carmi. (The town, not the musical. There is no musical -- yet. But I'm working on it.)

Carmi is the little town in Southern Illinois where I grew up. I say "little" because I think a population of 6,000 qualifies for that designation, but it is the biggest town in a 30 mile radius or so.

I was just back there last weekend for my high school reunion (which was a blast), and I was amazed all over again at all the music that has been through and come out of that place.

It all started at the reunion. Carmi used to have a place called Teen Town, and the father of one of my classmates had been the sponsor of it for many years. Bob, my classmate, put together an excellent and extensive display of pictures, programs, and even video (some of which had been reel-to-reel) of events that had happened there. I found more than one picture which included me dancing to the music of a live band.

And what bands we had! One of the most famous of the time and area was called East of Eden, and they are still playing. The Turks were also a biggie for us, and there were others that were very good. I don't believe they ever played in Carmi, but in nearby Mt. Carmel I once went to a dance that had Tommy James and The Shondells playing.

But most of that is in the past, and I also learned something about the future last weekend.

I ran into a friend from my old neighborhood at church on Sunday morning, we talked for just a minute, then he left briefly and came back with a CD in his hand. Turns out it was a band his son is part of, along with two other guys from Carmi and a fourth friend they knew from school.

Now I get CDs fairly often, but this one was special. I mean, three of these guys were from Carmi, and they were signed by a pretty prestigious label! The name of the group is Run Kid Run, and they are on Tooth & Nail Records.

And trust me when I tell you that as good as RKR is, those guys are not the only artists hanging around the Carmi area who are extremely talented. So what is it with Carmi and music? Did it all start with Teen Town years ago? We may never find out until we see Carmi - The Musical.

BTW, I just found a connection between Run Kid Run and Tommy James and The Shondells. Be the first to tell me what it is and I'll send you some good music.

As I was working on some podcasts this evening I was playing Spirit of the Century by The Blind Boys of Alabama, an album I can listen to over and over again.

A couple of years ago I was in Nashville for a conference that had nothing to do with music but was held at the Grand Ole Opry. One night there was an opportunity to go to the Opry and listen to a very nice line up of artists, with Christopher Cross as the headliner.

I wanted to see him, but I was much more excited to see The Blind Boys, one of two opening acts, and I couldn't stop jabbering about them until the other two members of the group I was with caved in and said they'd tag along, even though they were tired and would rather just stay in.

Christopher Cross was excellent, for sure, but the stars that night were The Blind Boys. Only three of the original six members of that group are still alive, and they were all there, singing away. They told their story in words, in song, and in a video that none of The Blind Boys have ever seen.

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me was that they had never, until that night, appeared at the Grand Ole Opry. Even though they sing Southern Gospel and not country, that just seemed wrong. But there wasn't a note or even a hint of a note of bitterness when they talked about finally getting to Opryland, there was only joy.

They must have had some sadness, because three of the six weren't there to celebrate and participate on that famous stage, but you'd never know it. Just like you'd never know by their attitudes or words that they were blind.

And you'd never know that they performed in relative obscurity for 40 years, driving (well, being driven) from gig to gig and loving the music every time. For the last 20 years or so they've been much better well known, finally getting discovered after all that time. But I don't think they've changed.

I can learn a lot from those fellows. Perseverance, patience, perspective and purpose all come to mind, and there are still 25 starting letters I haven't even used.

So thank you, Blind Boys, for all your good music and for your even better hearts. May we all learn to see as well as you can.

I got a phone call this morning from my good friend Mary Dawson, president of CQK Music, a Do Good Music Master, and a delightful lady.

She called to let me know that she'd had some challenges with her web site, which is why it is down, but the conversation quickly moved to an area she and I share a deep passion for, songwriting.

Mary is teaching a class on the topic at a local college, and she was telling me that she had just given her class the assignment of writing new words to the classic song, "Over The Rainbow." Their next assignment, of course, will be to write new music for their own words.

That is, in fact, a great way to write a song, especially if you are brand new to the task. What you end up with might even be pretty good using that method.

My question for you is, what other "tricks" do you know for writing a song? Do they work ?

Send me a note or post a comment, and I'll follow up on the topic later with some results.

I've just posted the latest episode of Catch A Rising Star, and I'd like to invite you to check it out. In fact, if you don't already subscribe to this podcast you need to get on board. We've had some great interviews and have more lined up.

But for now I want you to focus on Lijie (pronounced Leejay by those of us who don't quite know how to do the real Chinese intonation), a wonderful young woman who has lived most of her life in the U.S. and who started writing songs way back in junior high school.

Somewhere along the way she figured out that she loved doing that, and she started pursuing a career in music. With her determination, her desire, and with the gifts and abilities she has in abundance, I believe she's going to make it, too.

And in spite of the fact that she has written (her words) some "gut wrenching" songs, she has a great sense of humor. In one part of our interview that didn't make it to the final cut the topic of termites came up. (Don't ask.) Sharing a bit of trivia with Lijie, I mentioned that the weight of the termites in the world exceeds the weight of the people in the world. Hardly missing a beat, Lijie said those termites "must be super-sizing it at McDonald's."

Back to the songs, which you are going to want. You can buy Lijie's CD Roam on iTunes, at CD Baby, and even through her MySpace site. But the place to get it is directly from Lijie on her regular web site. Why? Because she'll autograph it for you! How cool is that?

In fact, while you're there buy several copies. The price is right, and someday that autograph alone could be worth more than a whole closet full of CDs! Lijie is, after all, a Rising Star.

I confess that I am a geek wannabe. I don't generally write code, although I did once write a commercial database program using 4D and I can work my way through HTML and even CSS. I've been a regular user of computers of various stripes for more than 20 years. Once upon a time, thanks largely to some very good people in the company, I oversaw technical support and testing for a company that made TCP/IP and even built a DHCP/DNS server.

All that just to say that I'm pretty confident when it comes to learning a new program that I'll be able to jump in and, faster than a speeding slug, get right to the usability stage.

But now I have been stopped in my tracks, and the pun (which you shall soon discover) is intended.

You see, I've been thinking seriously about upgrading my sound editing software. I've downloaded several different trial versions from various and sundry publishers and I've researched others. My basis for comparison included two programs that are very inexpensive and do pretty good work, but I wanted more and better.

Not that these programs are slouches, mind you. I started with Audacity, a free product that comes out of that part of the open source community called SourceForge. I like Audacity. It does almost everything I want, it does it fairly quickly, and it is very intuitive. The only problem is, it crashes now and then. Sometimes when that happens, even if I have just saved a file, I get a strange message about orphan blocks. i usually trash them, but sometimes that is not a good thing. So I use Audacity to do some voice recording and a lot of editing, but when I'm dealing with a file that is more than five minutes long, I edit in fear.

GarageBand is very stable (by comparison) on the other hand, but it lacks some of the things I like about Audacity. Changing the gain on one part of a track is a pain, etc., etc., etc. Still it's a great program, and as part of a $79 package that included a bunch of other cool apps, it's hard to beat.

Of course part of the goal of GarageBand is to sell Logic Express, and part of the goal of Logic Express is to sell Logic Pro, which is a very serious program indeed. I can tell by the retail price of one buck short of a grand.

So I figured I'd take the intermediate bait, and here's what I learned: there are some excellent programs out there, and some of those have extraordinarily powerful features. At least I suppose they do, which is all I can do. I certainly can't make them work.

Just before I downloaded the trial version of Logic Express from Apple I read a review of it that basically said, "This is a great program if you can figure out how to use it." I smirked at the screen, knew I'd figure it out easily, and barged in. I owe that reviewer an apology.

And that is why studios will survive. I used to think that all the great recording and editing sofware would make studios obsolete, but I think just the opposite will happen. Indie artists out there will buy some expensive program, record happily to their hard drive, and then not be able to open the file, let alone edit it. Others will buy an expensive program, figure out how to use it, install some baffling in their garage, and open an independent studio recording other indie artists.

So hang in there, studios. Most of the indies who bought all those fancy programs will be back, and they'll have a whole new appreciation for what you do. I know I do.

An article in the 10/10/06 Daily Variety says that Trans World Entertainment is "the last large, national music and video specialty chain still standing."

Now where you live there just might be one of the 148 Wherehouse stores, but they are owned by TWE. Same thing for Sam Goody and their 335 stores (Sam Goody and Suncoast, combined). TWE even tried to buy Tower Records, but that failed and Tower is now being liquidated, one CD at a time.

And do all the failed stores blame digital downloads of music and videos for their demise? No, they put most of the blame on someone you might not even consider one of their competitors -- Wal-Mart.

Sure, digital downloads play a role in all this, but more music is still sold in physical than electronic form, and the smaller bricks and mortar stores don't have the buying power -- or almost any kind of power -- to keep people from following the price. Wal-Mart can buy cheaper and sell lower than almost any other retailer, and they know it.

I've often thought about Wal-Mart putting others out of business, but I never thought about them putting a whole industry out of business. Have you?

I was looking at an obituary notice for legendary golfer Byron Nelson (someone I want to spend some time with in heaven), when I noticed this item in the Milestones section of last week's Time Magazine:

DIED. Etta Baker, 93, influential blues matriarch whose music helped spark the folk revival of the 1960s; in Fairfax, Va. Baker worked for nearly three decades at a textile mill before taking up the guitar full-time at age 60. Her raw, soulful mix of bluegrass and Delta blues--starting with blistering renditions of Railroad Bill and One-Dime Blues on a 1956 compilation album of southern Appalachian musicians--won her a cult following and, in 1991, a folk-heritage fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

You might infer from that text that Mrs. Baker didn't play guitar at all until she was 60, but that would be incorrect. She came from a musical family and started playing as when she was 3 or 4 years old, but she didn't play for the general public until 1956, when she made her initial recording at the age of 43. She wouldn't release another album for 35 years.

Instead, she voluntarily went back to a domestic life, working in a textile mill and raising nine children. Ultimately, as the Time snippet indicated, she made music her full time occupation, and the world was richer for it. She didn't do a lot of recording, however, releasing One Dime Blues in 1991 and Railroad Bill in 1999. Etta Baker with Taj Mahal (I think Taj was mostly listening to Etta) was released in 2004 when Mrs. Baker was 91. And she was, according to All Music Guide, working on yet another album, to be released this year.

I don't know about you, but all that kind of inspires me and gives me a little perspective.

And it adds one more person I want to spend some time with in heaven.

I'm a big fan of iTunes. I use it every day to download podcasts and almost every day to listen to music. Once in a while I buy songs or albums, and I've even purchased a video, but I rarely look at the list of "Today's Top Songs."

This morning I was taken there automatically as part of a registration process, and what I saw surprised me. And that surprised me even more.

What jumped out was not the title of the number one song (How To Save A Life, by The Fray), it was all those little red boxes with the word "explicit" inside them.

Sixteen of the top 100 -- for those of you who are math-challenged that's 16% -- were marked explicit. The online Merriam-Webster says that means: 1 a : fully revealed or expressed without vagueness, implication, or ambiguity : leaving no question as to meaning or intent <explicit instructions> b : open in the depiction of nudity or sexuality <explicit books and films>.

Interestingly, there were only six songs marked "clean," a designation that indicates an explicit version is available somewhere. All of those clean songs were lower on the list than their explicit counterparts except for one.

Knowing that most of the people who buy music on iTunes are teenagers, I wasn't surprised that the explicit versions were more popular. I know what those years are like, what the attitudes are, how the rebellion and exploration and peer pressure and insecurity and hormones and desires all kick in at once and explode your brain into tiny fragments. Teenagers aren't stupid people, they're just teenagers. Sometimes they feel almost human, and most of the time they are.

And knowing that the goal of the record industry is to sell units, I wasn't surprised that so many explicit songs were available. If the record industry understands anything at all, it is how to exploit -- I mean reach -- their market. The big record companies aren't evil, they are in business to make money, and they are far more interested in protecting their turf (e.g., downloads) than they are in protecting society. Social responsibility is not their job, social mining is, and they are good at it.

So here I sit, surprised at my surprise, because none of this should surprise me.

At the same time, I refuse to accept it as "just the way things are" and not make some effort to make a difference. After all, I know the damage that too much exploration as a teenager can have on a still growing mind. I know the chaos that can happen in a life with no boundaries. I know the scars that take too long to heal from failing to discriminate between what is good and what is not and simply acting on impulse or at the will of the so called crowd.

Somehow I survived all those things, and so will most of the people who buy those explicit songs and fill their minds with negative energy, salacious thoughts, and a vocabulary that will hold them back in ways they can't even imagine at the moment.

The way to counter all this, I think, is not by rallying the troops to take all the explicit music off the market. This stuff has been around almost as long as dirt, and it will not and cannot be eradicated.

No, the way to fight it is to replace it with good music. Not just a clean version of the same song, although that is a positive step, but songs that are good in intent, content and quality. And when I say quality, I mean we'd better make sure that the production values, the musicianship, the writing, and the performance of those songs is every bit as good as it can be. Anyone who counts on the positive nature of a song to carry it alone is in for a shock. Very few people want to listen to a bad song with a good message.

And what about those big record companies? The indies are taking care of that.

Have you checked out our Catch A Rising Star podcast lately? I'm telling you, there are some artists there you need to know!

Right now we have interviews with three different artists there in four podcasts (our interview with Vickie Natale is in two parts), and we have the next two artists either on the schedule or in the can.

If you haven't already done this, make sure you subscribe to the Catch A Rising Star podcast so they'll download as soon as they are posted.

This is great stuff -- and who knows, one of these days we might even interview you!!