Oh, you lucky duck. I would have loved to see them together, live. I saw Louis Armstrong, live, at the 1952 Olympics in Oslo, Norway, and he was great. The two of them together is a real treat. I have this one down loaded to my computer. See the link below. Here is a link that might be useful: Ella and Louis together.

I guess the advantage of listening to mostly lyric free jazz and instrumental music is that I don't get caught up in lyrics so I don't take trips down memory lane when I hear the song again. (I'm joking, I can still get transported back to an earlier time when I hear the music of my youth, lyrics or not.) I think I am blessed with a bad memory for bad memories. It helps keep regrets down to a minimum. Recently I told my sisters my 3 biggest clothing regrets (things I didn't buy or returned and I now regret). I am very grateful that those are the only things I can remember to regret. (For the record it was an extra coat I returned but cudda/shudda offered to a sister because the one I kept for me is nearly perfect, another coat I saw last year thinking I would find something similar and never did, and a tee shirt. I don't wear tees with logos or sayings or vacation locations. The one I regret was a tee with an abstract drawing, including a dog, and the line underneath the drawing was Avant-garde dog. It still makes me snicker. I could have framed the picture part and not worn the tee, but I didn't think of that at the time. It would be a nice reminder of that particular place and time.) I guess the best we can hope for is to use any regret as a starting point for future improvement. If you regret not being more adventurous, then use that feeling to do something adventurous. It doesn't mean you have to quit your job or your life and travel to India. It is doing whatever will help you recreate the feeling you feel is absent. We are who we are because of what came before this moment, good, bad, or indifferent.

Oh gosh, kim...I'm so sorry. I know it's meager solace, but I'm thinking that if your dear one lived to 18, she loved you and knew you loved her. What more can we really ask for... Feels kind of odd talking about anything else now, but it's very sweet of you to ask about the concert. Since you did, I'll tell you -- it was BEYOND even my expectations. They're amazing. The band was TIGHT and could still jam so well, so much better than I've ever heard them, in fact, it was not like a pathetic "reunion tour" but more like a real band that just keeps getting better and better with age. Neil Finn is what I've decided to call a poet-composer-rocker, not just a songwriter. Our daughter had a blast, as did the many kids (2nd generation Crowdie fans :)) in the audience. We spent the night basically on our feet, dancing, singing...it was WAY better than 2007, which I thought was magical enough for a lifetime anyway. But these guys are *growing*, in their 50s (the new drummer is younger, though), and doing brilliant, innovative stuff that I think is partly influenced by his own son, Liam Finn, who's a growing musician in his own right (as is his other son, Elroy, but Elroy doesn't have quite the track record yet). I've attached a more traditional CH song from the new album, "Twice if You're Lucky"...it is special to me because I think Neil saw me singing it to DD and hugging her (we were only 6th row--the song's written for Nick Seymour, his bassist, and Nick's first child, born when Nick was either 50 or close to it, upending his life as he'd known it, and Neil has two grown sons, so he's moving onto a new phase as well--never just one line of meaning in his songs) and when he finished (we were all pretty much still seated at that point), and I rose to give him a standing ovation, he looked at me straight on and said "thank you"--my DD can verify it--she said "Neil just thanked you". *sigh* :) And finally, in honor of your departed dear one, here's a song by Neil about his dog Lester, that he wrote when he was *14* years old, and he was afraid Lester was going to die when he'd been hit by a car... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr3u-qBNrCE Makes me cry every time. No, Neil, "us" humans don't have much dignity... Here is a link that might be useful: from the new album...

This is a good thread, very enjoyable. There are so many favorites, but two that are special to me are: 1. I'll Be Home for Christmas. My father would tell us every time that the song came on about how this was the song they played on the ship on his way to Germany during the Korean War. It became such a funny thing that when I was older, I would end up calling him when I would hear it and say "Dad, did I ever tell you about the time you were on a ship in the army and they played "I'll Be Home for Christmas?...well it's on the radio right now". What a great guy he was, miss him a lot. 2. "Oh Holy Night" a memory created only about 6 years ago--we were on a cruise for Christmas, and we were leaving St. Lucia on Christmas Eve, so standing at the aft of shift watching the island disappear, this was the song that was softly playing on the ship's PA system. Oh, the goosebumps I get. I still don't know if it was Celine Dion or Gloria Estefan singing it. So of course, I have both versions on my iTouch.