Just one more quick note before I take off today. Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith, has won my award for all-time dumbest rock song lyric. The band is responsible for some fun songs (and he himself is responsible for an amazingly hot daughter), but yesterday their song “Crazy” was on the radio. This is not a new song, it’s practically a “rock classic” now (gag, choke), but there’s this one rhyme…

What can I do?
I feel like the color blue…

“I feel like the color blue”!?!?! You make millions of dollars off of this schlock? Musicians are the bards of the era, the popular poets, and this is the dreck that makes up the weekly top 40? C’mon, man, you can’t do any better than that? Put down the whiskey and pick up some Tennyson, for crying out loud.
If I had some more free time, I’d start up a how-to site for poets on how to use GarageBand. Poets, take up your keyboards! If this is the best American music has to offer, there is a veritable trasure chest of opportunity waiting to be seized.
(Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Kate, Nick, Derek, Scott Andrew and company, anybody want to help build a Music Theory 101 site for the hopeful?)