Passing the Musical Baton

Jim Calloway, of the Oklahoma Bar association, used to be one of my favorite people, and his Web site, Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, one of my favorite sites. But now he has fallen pretty much to the bottom of my list by tagging me with this Musical Baton "virus."

OK, here go my long-winded answers:

1. What is my total volume of music?
   I have hundreds of CDs, and, somewhere in storage, many more tape cassettes and vinyl albums. (I did manage to avoid falling into the 8-track tape fad.) Embarrassingly, I have so many songs downloaded under the Napster subscription plan that I had to upgrade from a 200MB external hard drive to a 300.

2. What is the last CD I bought?
   Technically, the last CD I bought was Company You Keep, by John Gorka. I like him, and have several of his albums, but I bought this CD to give to a friend. There is one song on the CD named People My Age, which I found quite appropriate to read aloud at his 60th birthday party. The last music I bought was the VH1 DVD, Warren Zevon: Keep Me In Your Heart. That is a simultaneously funny and gut-wrenching video diary of Zevon's last months -- when he was recording The Wind after learning he had terminal cancer.
   
3. What song is playing right now?
   Right now, I'm watching a Tivo of the end of the third round of the U.S. Open golf tournament, but if not for that, I would be listening to whatever song was playing on channel 15 on XM Radio -- the Folk Village Channel.

4. What five songs do I listen to a lot because they are special to me?
   I'm going to side-step some of the sentimentality, and give a generic answer.  (Besides, I couldn't narrow it down to five songs if you held a gun to my head.) The music that evokes some of the strongest memories for me is that of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and other folkies of the mid to late 60's. Like Jim Calloway, I've been to some, but not enough, Jimmy Buffett concerts. Jim also mentioned Marcia Ball. I saw her give a fantastic performance at Poor David's Pub in Dallas years ago. The Stones remind me of the days I was dating my wife, Cinda.

   My two favorite recently-deceased songwriters are Townes Van Zandt and Warren Zevon. Some of my favorite songwriter/singers are: Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Nancy Griffith, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Mary Black, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Buffett, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine, Steve Goodman, Robert Earl Keen, Jr., Guy Clark, and the guy with the best singing voice ever, Jimmy LaFave. My parents will get mad if I don't mention that my brother, Dr. James Kraft, is a history professor by day, but a jazz guitarist (and a darned good one) by night, in Honolulu.

5. Five people I'm passing the musical baton to?
   I'm going to be like Jim, and not burden five people with this chore. I'll choose four people I have learned much from in the past, and hope they don't hold this against me in the future.

  I'm passing the musical baton along to Matt Homann (the nonbillable hour), Reid Trautz (Reid My Blog!), Carolyn Elefant (My Shingle), and Larry Bodine (Larry Bodine's Professional Marketing Blog).