I've finally hacked together a new playlist, Peaceful; no specific genre, just music that deeply quiets me the only requirement for inclusion.

By "hacked" I refer to the slightly laborious method of finding and including diverse material known to be playable via last.fm; its interface for adding such. I lightly criticize for I have no ideas for improving upon it.

I'd have added more concert music, but last.fm doesn't have many of the specific recordings that do exist in my personal playlist in iTunes.

Enjoy, and please feel free to add playable last.fm track-links to music that soothes you,…

While jazz history and concert music are the meat of my musical diet, it would be untrue to state that I no longer enjoy the music of my youth. I have several friends at last.fm who seem interested in late '60's music (although they seem to have been born in or after the '80's, their playlists are startlingly accurate).

So here is my best attempt at recalling what we listened to in 1970. I was a Soph in High School, the Summer of Love was a year or two in the past, and psychedelia was The Way. The music reached…

I'm getting so fucking old I ought to make a list of musicians I've seen play live.

If there's any advice I can glean from this attempt, upon reflection, it would be: go see the name acts that everybody goes to see. Our crowd usually tried to avoid the lowest common denominator acts, and now, years later I wish I'd gone to see, in my generation for example, say, The Stones (with Brian Jones); acts that were always around, yet I never saw because everyone else was going to see them.

I'll try a chronologic approach (and I'm not saying…

I occasionally suffer from mild bouts of depression, sometimes seasonal, sometimes situational, always from a bad attitude.

I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner, but I just started a playlist that includes any tune that cheers me the fuck up. Artists, genres, instruments, singers; it doesn't matter, just so long as the tune passes the test: It cheers me the fuck up.

I've found working on the playlist when depressed to be somewhat daunting, so I recommend doing this when you're feeling good, if you want to try it yourself.

Caring for my Mom during her last…

Looking at my listening habits, thanks to last.fm, it looks like the playlist of a schizophrenic. For this I blame (and thank) Apple, the iPod and iTunes. Technology has revived my love of music. Previous to the iPod, I was a strict Jazz and Concert music snob, with seemingly less and less time to sit down and listen. I have a degree in music, which means I can justify my tastes better than some. :)

Something has changed the way I listen to music. I'll try to back track to my present day schism. First there was Casady & Greene's…