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A couple of years ago, I was man enough to  officially apologize to Fleetwood Mac. I was wrong, "Tusk" was a great album. In fact, since I wrote that mea culpa, it's become one of my favorite albums ever.

So now it's Squeeze's turn. I was a massive Squeeze fan in the '80s, believed they could do no wrong, and stuck with them through their Jools Holland-less period. But I felt they were starting to slide with "Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti," and then "Babylon and On," and by the time "Frank" came out, with its horrible title, I just decided I was done, barely gave it a listen, and tossed it to the back of the queue. Twenty-two years later, I just want to say I'm sorry. "Frank" was not only a great Squeeze album, it's a great album by any measure, and it should have been recognized as one of their best. My mistake, guys.

(Of course, it could just be the shellac fumes working on me.)

By the way, like a lot of bands of the '80s, they were massively ripped off by the music biz. They've put out a collection of their greatest hits, newly recorded but extremely faithful to the originals, hoping to make some money off the sounds that the '80s channels keep pumping out. And Glenn Tilbrook's "Pandemonium Ensues" was one of my favorite albums of last year. Highly worth a listen.

Ever wondered what makes an all-time classic song? Maybe it's three-part harmonies and some tricky guitar work -- or maybe it's 16 tracks of vocals set up to be played like chords, a Moog synthesizer, and the office secretary. Via Boing Boing, check out this fascinating little story of the making of 10cc's "I'm Not In Love." (Not least for its clever use of images.)

Where can I download free, officially sanctioned recordings of Warren Zevon live performances from throughout his career? Amazingly enough, there is such a site. Most of its free music relates to jam bands, which couldn't interest me less, but there are a couple of surprises in its collection, including Cracker (and Camper Van Beethoven), Cowboy Junkies, and Zevon. My favorite so far: Live at the Bluebird, 1996. There's also a nice little set from the Austin City Limits studio.

There are thousands of other fascinating things at the Internet Archive as well -- it's a great browse. Its search engine is unreliable though -- I've found things there on Google that I can't locate with the internal engine or directories.

No need to thank me. Just go.

Mark Wood dazzles East Greenbush strings students before their two-day workshop, Electrify Your Strings

Times are hard, no question, and schools are faced with tough choices as they try to present budgets that can pass. The shortfalls are huge, and the cuts are deep. And the cuts, as always, include music. The current proposal in our district is to eliminate the elementary programs (and with them, because of the way these things work, an incredibly dedicated, inspiring teacher who leads the orchestra). And parents and students, understandably upset over the potential loss of one of the programs that makes our school district special (and is one of the best programs in the State, and probably beyond), are scrambling to find ways to save our music.

Usually this raises the question of why music is always on the chopping block, but that's not really the right question. The right question is, "Why is music optional?"

It is well-known that the study and playing of music not only taps into something extremely primal in our brains (and if you haven't already read it, I highly recommend Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain On Music"), it promotes complex thinking in ways that support other learning - particularly maths and sciences, which we all agree are more important than ever and will be the highest-paying career paths for the foreseeable future. Simply understanding the concepts of octaves, intervals, frequencies, the circle of fifths - these are surprisingly complex concepts, but they are concepts that, more than any other part of the curriculum, can be experimented with and demonstrated in the real world, in the orchestra room, every day.

We are constantly being told we need to do better in the maths and sciences, yet despite years of increasing standards and forced testing, the beatings are not improving test scores or morale. Beatings rarely do. So now, faced with even more beatings (and don't think that a standardized test is anything else - it serves no instructional purpose, and the teachers' promises that they don't "teach to the test" are, unfortunately and necessarily, untrue), we are looking to cut the only instruction in our schools where math, science, personal expression and actual fun are brought into our schools on a daily basis. This makes no sense. It should be mandatory.

Music education not only gives you the tools for abstract thought and a daily application thereof, it provides numerous other benefits that are always being stressed in the "core" academic classes. Teamwork? There's no team that needs more teamwork than a band or orchestra. Study and practice? Absolutely required. Ability to read another language? Musical notation is definitely another language. Public presentation? Every student in orchestra, band, or chorus knows what it's like to stand up in front of a crowded auditorium, with every person out there waiting to hear what you have to say. Problem-solving? These students, some of the most dedicated in the school, sit down in front of a fresh problem every few days and go about figuring out how to solve it. (Okay, so the bass players stand. Still . . . .) How can this be optional?

I suspect that music is frequently dismissed as an optional part of education because it is so ubiquitous - it is so much part of the background of our culture that we hardly notice it. Try to find a space in our lives that is without music - it's in our cars, our offices, coffee shops, grocery stores, elevators. Search for a moment on television without music in the background. The entertainment industry is one of our country's few growth industries, one of our biggest exports, and nearly every arm of that industry uses music.

How important is music to our everyday lives? With all respect to the sciences, no one invented a world-changing portable periodic table player that is in every teenager's pocket, and those kids aren't finding new ways to get hold of pirated copies of Fermat's Last Theorem. (It's free, and they still don't want it.) So does it make sense that our schools, which are meant to prepare the next generation, would deny them the education that would prepare them to take part in or even just understand something that is at the core of our culture? Does it makes sense that a school might be the only place you could go today and not hear music?

We're on the college tour circuit, and we recently visited MIT, the oldest (and many would say still the finest) institution dedicated to practical education, to the application of mathematics and sciences to real world problems. At MIT, students build robots for the hell of it, 73 members of its faculty have been awarded Nobel Prizes through the years, and its graduates are virtually guaranteed good-paying jobs in science and tech. And at MIT, 82% of undergraduates take arts classes. The number one minor at MIT, the top technical school in the country?

It's music.

Take music off the chopping block, and instead make it the centerpiece of a 21st-century education.

At Saturday night's "Electrify Your Strings" performance with Mark Wood, the first lead violinist of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Hannah was featured on electric violin on "Eleanor Rigby" . . . and she was awesome.

For rights reasons we were asked not to post video of the concert (and video is the work of the devil anyway), but the local news covered it and captured her having an amazing great time -- see it here.

The elementary music program is currently on the chopping block. Why music is always considered optional, when it's an integral part of our everyday lives and one of the most important things to our culture, is just beyond me.

Or one weekend. Spent the whole day yesterday shooting the great kids in the East Greenbush Central School District strings program preparing for their massive concert tonight with Mark Wood, formerly of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and now the driving force behind the Electrify Your Strings program. It was extraordinarily cool to get to watch them rehearse, see how brilliantly prepared they all are, and watch them have fun by stepping out of their classical training to get a little rock on. They're doing "Eleanor Rigby," "Born To Be Wild," "Live and Let Die," "Stairway to Heaven," and a few other rock chestnuts that sound very very cool when played by an orchestra that is stomping on its strings, accompanied by a group of electric violins and cello, led by the guy who made the instruments. The concert is tonight, and it will be amazing. Plus also, Hannah's rocking the Viper during "Eleanor Rigby."

Best quote of the day yesterday? "Cellos! You only have one note!" "But it's a really great note!"

Also, even as we speak, Rebekah is at NYSSMA, the big annual evaluation, rolling through a ridiculously complex piano piece and I'm sure doing very well. It kinda required a third hand, as far as I could see.

We tend to remember TV of the '70s as safe and formulaic. Overall, that was true, but there was some real weirdness to be had, too. Recently ran across this clip of Alice Cooper, at the height of his parent-freaking-out powers ("He wears makeup! He calls himself Alice!"), prancing about with The Muppets. Even 35 years later, it's kinda strange.

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Our high school orchestra is involved in a very cool project to bring Mark Wood, late of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, for a two-day seminar to "electrify your strings." We're raising funds left and right to try to make this happen, and the best opportunity to help is through a great fund-raiser at the Colonie Center Barnes & Noble on Nov. 13 -- if you buy anything in-store that day and present our voucher or tell them you're supporting the Columbia High School Orchestra, a generous chunk of the proceeds goes to the Orchestra.

They're also selling Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes, great gifts for the holidays. All the information on the Mark Wood program and all the informational flyers are here at the Electrify Your Strings homepage. Help us out!

Thanks to J. Eric Smith for reminding me of last summer's extensive (and never really quite closed-out) Joe Cocker Phase, in which I introduced my long-suffering children to the excesses of Joe Cocker, who in many ways represented the beginning of the end, the more and more and more of rock and roll that ultimately led to the quite-justified Ramones Reaction, to the need to get rid of the backup singers, the double-necked guitars, the insanely large touring bands of the middle '70s. But Joe was, as I said, only the beginning of the end, and his excesses were born of marrying rock to the rhythm and blues revue, and, of course, to being Joe Cocker. His excesses were still musical and highly entertaining, and by god did his band groove. Joe was also, famously, incoherent. That he became primarily known for his covers may have been something of a blessing, for if we hadn't known the songs he was singing, we'd have had no idea what he was going on about, and another great talent would have passed by unnoticed. Because when Joe made a song his own, it was his own, and the original lyrics were just serving suggestions.

That said, J. Eric was kind enough to bring this video of Joe Cocker at Woodstock to my attention. I don't know that anyone before thought to worry about what Joe was singing, but now we know. Highly recommended.