I recently watched “The Human Footprint” on the National Geographic Channel. The show is absolutely stunning – an incredible thought provoking experience, especially in terms of personal introspection. I know the show has made me think more about my impact on the environment than any aggressive activist or political campaign. Don't get me wrong; I may be a wannabe rebel hippie-chick (my husband just informed me that I cannot be a real hippie so I’ll just pretend to be one on the internet), but I don’t have to be a radical activist or fantasy-philosopher, anti-establishment type to take environmental issues very seriously.

Murfreesboro, Tennessee might seem an unlikely birthplace for a band that merges a variety of cosmopolitan music styles into one exciting whole, but the debut of We Were The States proves that rock music still has a few compelling permutations available to a band that knows how to combine all the right elements. Believe The Thieves is such a dramatically effective debut, cleverly interweaving sounds reminiscent of late 70’s NY rock renaissance (Television, Dead Boys) with early 90’s Brit-Pop (Oasis, Blur) and contemporary urban indie rock (The Walkmen, The National). 

The International Songwriting Competition (ISC) has announced its 2007 winners, awarding this year's Grand Prize to the song "I'm Not Your Friend," a collaboration between Eduard Glumov from Kazakhstan and Z. Mulls from the USA. In addition, many other deserving songwriters also share in the kudos of winning their respective categories in ISC 2007. The winners were chosen by this year's prestigious panel of celebrity and industry judges including Tom Waits; Loretta Lynn; Nelly Furtado; Robert Smith (The Cure); Ray Davies (The Kinks); Ornette Coleman; John Mayall; Monte Lipman (President, Universal Records); Charlie Walk (President, Epic Records); and many others.

Online this spring, is "Let it be heard…the Story of The Collective Sound", an inspirational story of a small group of young musicians from around the world as they embark on the adventure of a lifetime during The Collective Sound (TCS) Summer Music Academy, the world's first ever touring music camp.

In the spirit of change, the Atlanta Jazz Festival is introducing a new format and new venues.  This year’s festivities will be held throughout the month of May in four Atlanta neighborhoods over four consecutive weekends culminating over Memorial Day Weekend, May 24th -26th, in downtown Atlanta at Robert W. Woodruff Park, located on Auburn Avenue.  This year’s Atlanta Jazz Festival theme is 31 Years | 31 Days | Atlanta.

When it comes to art, it is often easy to draw a line in the sand. This line is used to separate the “authentic” from the “artificial”, the “pure” from the “tainted”, and the “intellectual” from the “senseless”. As masters of our own subjective loyalties we often forget how relative these finely defined categories really are. Rather than embracing new trends, we tend to place them under the harsh comparative light of nostalgia. Sometimes it takes a new generation of fans and open minded artists to show loyalists that there is life after the golden age.