I consider Marc Ribot to be the ultimate guitar renaissance man. Just consider a small portion of his resume: Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, The Lounge Lizards, John Zorn, T Bone Burnett, Patti Scialfa, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Rob Wasserman, Ellery Eskelin, Marianne Faithfull, Mike Patton, Cibo Matto, Dave Douglas, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss.

Crazy, is what that list is.

The music that Ribot has produced in the last year or so provides a concentrated look at his career. He's put out an album of guitar solo material (Exercises in Futility) that flows from pensive to skronk. Then there's his more rootsy work with Allison Kraus and Robert plant on their phenomenal Raising Sand.

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Although it’s been pretty much common knowledge for awhile now, let us start by stating the obvious. The record industry, at least in the traditional sense we once knew it, is all but dead.

There I said it okay?

The list of suspects as to who actually fired the fatal shots is of course a long one that most of you reading this have all seen before. This would include everything from the advent of easily accessible downloads on the internet, to the short-sightedness of the traditional record companies themselves in their failure to embrace the emerging new technology rather than fight it, as they initially did.

I could go on and on about this. But in the end what’s the point?

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Three reasons I’m crushing on pop/country/folk siren Brandi Carlile.1) Carlile’s vocals aren’t perfect and I like it that way. After hearing the perfectly styled, perfectly processed vocals in so many other pop songs, it’s refreshing to hear a crack here and there. Especially at the peak of an emotional lyric, like in the ‘The Story.’ “Nobody wants to hear perfection,” she recently told Phoenix New Times, “because nobody’s perfect.” Amen.2) She travels in the right circles. Carlile recently finished tour dates with the venerable Indigo Girls, and sang ‘Love Me Tender’ with Chris Isaak for an Elvis tribute on ABC.
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