My interest in music in recent years has been, if not dead, at least mildly comatose. For whatever reason I’ve just been really apathetic about listening and collecting. Sure, I’ve gone to a few concerts, maybe even bought a CD here and there from a local musician but, by and large, I just haven’t paid much attention to the scene. That’s changed however.

One of my buddies works at LaLa.com, a site that allows people to trade CDs with each other for the nominal fee of $1.00/CD. While the business model and legality of it all have yet to be proven. (Technically, I guess it is legal… but you do have to wonder about the sprit of it all), I have become a pretty big fan of the service it provides. To be completely honest however, it’s not costing me anything because I was an early tester. I also take as much enjoyment out of providing feedback to them on what does/doesn’t work as I do actually trading music so it’s a mite hard to say for sure that it’s the music trading that has me so excited. But… the sleeping music dragon has awoken (optionally read that as, “the comatose music puppy dog twitched a little”). I’ve been actively discovering new music lately and paying a little more attention to what I listen to.

And while we’re on the subject of music, topic #2 is my friend Paulette, who hosts the world-reknown Paulette International website. He is a funky cat, who happens to be a talented musician with a knack for writing some the quirkiest lyrics I’ve ever heard and setting them to some pretty darn good music. A while back I talked him into putting MP3s of his tunes on his site and setting up a PayPal donation link (rather than spending time hawking his CDs at street fairs). So if you’re looking for something really different, check it out and maybe drop a few bucks in the donation link at the bottom of his home page while you’re there. Oh, and be sure to take a peek at his illustrations page from which I blatently ripped off this entry’s “Mad Fish Disease” art.