I no longer have patience when there’s a power outage… Sorry I didn’t write my usual Friday Pop Rock Nation post last week. I was in the midst of a 38 hour power outage here in North Carolina. It started Thursday night at about 5:30pm. I was on the phone with my husband, Bill, who was in Indianapolis on business. He asked me how the

It’s June! That means it’s time for America’s Got Talent! I have to confess that NBC’s general talent show, America’s Got Talent, is kind of a guilty pleasure for me. Generally speaking, I don’t like to watch talent shows. I don’t watch American Idol, X Factor, or The Voice. I did get into So You Think You Can Dance a few years ago, but lost

Some songs are just plain guilty pleasures… I may lose what little street cred I ever had by admitting that I kind of like Paris Hilton’s minor hit song from 2006, “Stars Are Blind”. Like a lot of people, I scoffed when I heard Paris Hilton, formerly famous for being a beautiful heiress who made a sex tape, had made an album. I didn’t bother

Artist: Agony Family Album: Earth! The Agony Family’s Earth! is an album of mainstream impulses. It’s pleasant, it’s easy to like (if you don’t recoil at synthesizers and glossy guitar in your pop music), but it’s a tough sell as something truly great, and as my favorite album of a strong musical year. I’ll make multiple awkward stabs at it. My first is to discuss a

Artist: Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears Album: Daffy’s Elixir … But then there’s her reaction the first time she heard Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears: amused disbelief. “Are you listening to this on purpose?” {I was} “… It’s so cheesy! And ’70s!” Now, rather than sniping about an INXS fan calling anyone’s music “cheesy”, I will take the high road and concede her points.

The right music can be life-altering. Here are six artists whose music changed my life in some way… Pat Benatar Crimes of Passion (1980) Picture it. It’s 1981. I’m nine years old and there is still one older sister out of three living at home with me. My older sister is seventeen and has a stereo that plays vinyl. Every night, I hear her playing

Turning off the TV and turning on good music… Tuesday night, my husband Bill and I watched several episodes of South Park on Comedy Central. Wednesday morning, I turned on the TV to get my daily trash fix. It wasn’t working. I got nothing but “snow”. Realizing that sometimes the satellite goes on the fritz and fixes itself, I decided to wait it out. I

One of my favorite things about travel is discovering street musicians… My husband Bill and I just got home from Italy and Greece. We’ve been fortunate enough to have traveled quite extensively in Europe. I’ve probably seen more of Europe than I have of the United States. One thing I’ve noticed both in Europe and abroad is that there’s no shortage of talented street musicians

There was a lot of bonding going on at the piano bar last week… My husband Bill and I have just come back from a two week vacation in Italy and Greece. We always have a great time when we take trips and this last one was no exception. We spent a night in Venice, two nights in Florence, two nights in Rome, a week

 Artist: Serj Tankian Album: Harakiri I’m not sure how famous Serj Tankian is on his own, but through 2006 he spent a decade as lead singer, rhythm guitarist, and occasional keyboardist for System of a Down, who scored the flat-out weirdest series of major hit songs (Chop Suey, Toxicity, B.Y.O.B.) of any band since the 1970s. I’d only recommend three of their five albums, but those