I don’t often make it to the coastal areas of San Diego any more, and these days when I do it’s the coastal areas near San Diego, not so much the North County coastal areas. I opted for a nice drive down the coast and when I neared Encinitas, it struck me that it’s been ages since I last visited Lou’s Records on Coast Highway.

I spent a fortune there back in the day as they were the best place to get import CDs back when I used to buy a lot of music. In fact, my very first visit was an expensive one as I found some amazing hard to get ABBA imports that to this day I’ve never seen anywhere outside of overpriced eBay auctions. Lou’s Records was also the store where I did my very first special order of an import, which was for a Swedish language solo album by Marie Fredriksson of Roxette. So when I decided to stop in at Lou’s I wasn’t sure they were even still around as it seems stores dedicated to selling music are harder to find than they used to be. Fortunately Lou’s was still there and I was instantly nostalgic for the hours I would spend combing the racks there for the many treasures I would find there.

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I’ve long felt that the music industry has been out of touch with reality with the business model it has been using since the Internet became so popular. My opinion remains unchanged but I wanted to share a recent experience, that had the record industry been set up to capitalize on it, they would have not only gotten a sale from me, for which I was perfectly willing to spend money on, but because of sheer stupidity and region issues, I was forced into downloading for free, what I was perfectly willing to pay for.

I am a subscriber to Sirius Satellite Radio and one of the programs I like to record on my Sirius Radio is a weekly broadcast called “Nordic Rox” which is a three hour program specializing in music from Scandinavia. The witty tagline for the show is that it is home for “Good Looking Music.” The program is hosted by Sven Lindström and is sometimes joined by Per Gessle of my favorite group, Roxette. As I tend to like acts from Sweden, it’s a good opportunity each week to hear some classic and new material from Scandinavian artists. Well on one of the recent shows, I came across a song entitled “Longing For Lullabies” performed by the remix outfit called Kleerup featuring vocals by Titiyo. Titiyo is the younger sister of Neneh Cherry, and half-sister to Eagle-Eye Cherry.

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Per Gessle, who is best known as being the primary songwriting force behind Roxette, released a brand new solo album in Europe at the end of 2008 called, “Party Crasher.” This is his first English language solo album since his 2005 experimental solo album released under the artist name “Son Of A Plumber.” Prior to the “Son Of A Plumber” album, Per Gessle’s last English solo album was 1997′s “The World According to Gessle.”

I recently added the new “Party Crasher” album to my collection and while I was uploading it to my iPod, I was struck with a sense of nostalgia as I was thinking about how long music written by Per Gessle has been a part of my life. With 2009 being a significant year in that it has been 20 years since I got my very first Roxette album, the “Look Sharp!” album. I had to smile because my first Roxette album was bought for me, and I didn’t honestly want it. My mother bought it on the recommendation of my brother as something he thought I would like, and I rudely said that I didn’t want it, but my mother insisted I try it, and it ended up being such a good album that I played it to death. I loved the album so much that when Roxette’s next album, “Joyride” was released I was both excited about it’s release but really scared that I might not like it as much as the first.

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On March 11th, I caught “The Broadway Tour” of Jonathan Larson’s Epic masterpiece, RENT, hit San Diego’s Civic Theatre. I went with my friend Louie Taylor. Part of the main reason I wanted to go see RENT was because the main draw of the tour is that it has been billed as featuring original cast members, Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal who would be reprising their roles as Mark and Roger respectively. An unadvertised bonus is that another original cast member, Gwen Stewart, is also reprising her role in the tour as one of the ensemble players as a variety of characters and featured solo vocalist during “Seasons Of Love.”

As the first tour since RENT closed on Broadway in September 2008, it seems all the more poignant to see such a high profile tour with Original cast members Rapp and Pascal on board. They’re no strangers to coming back to the roles that made them Broadway stars as they both were part of the original workshop shows, transferred the show to Broadway and then later to London, then recreated their roles in the film version of RENT in 2005, and then for a limited engagement in Summer 2007 returned to Broadway according to BroadwayWorld.com. These roles have been a part of their lives off and on for the last 15 years. In the interview in the Playbill handed out at the performance Adam Pascal suspects “when we’re done with this tour, I have a strong suspicion that this will be it for me and RENT. At some point I am going to be too old to do the part.”

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Now that 2009 is now upon us, it seems that it would be good to take a few minutes to highlight what made high points for me in 2008. Taking a quick glance at the list of items that made the list this year, it seems that the very early 1980′s seem to be related to almost all of the items that make the list for this year. The influence of the 1980′s will be readily apparent as you check out the list. And I’ll point those out along the way for those who might not quite see the influence.

Without further ado, I now present My 9 Most Incredible Things of 2008, in no particular order… (more…)

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It was a bit of bittersweet sad news today when Graeme Read and Grant Whittingham decided to shut down both ABBAMAIL.com and the ABBAMAIL mailing list which has been a big part of my life for almost 12 years now. The closing was just under three months shy of ABBAMAIL’s 12th birthday.

ABBAMAIL wasn’t so much just a bunch of ABBA fans as it was a living, breathing community. While in the late 1990′s, a lot of online fan communities consisted of lists, fairly impersonal message boards, and fairly simple webpages, I personally was a member of a quite a number of them for various hobbies and interests. And it seemed without fail that as soon as the subjects of the list seemed to disappear off the pop culture radar, so did the people in these communities and many of them fade out and disappeared. ABBAMAIL was different.

Unlike any other forum I had been a part of from the same era, ABBAMAIL was quite a unique beast. A lot of that is due to the community’s founders, Graeme Read and Grant Whittingham, who fostered a true sense of community, simply being an ABBA fan was something all of us on the list had in common, but for Graeme and Grant that simply wasn’t enough. Members of the list were expected to introduce themselves and share that person behind behind the letters that make up our names.

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CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO WITH THE MUSIC IN STEREO

If you’ve ever seen the colossal selling video “The Secret” or read the book version, or even seen the “The Secret” discussed on Oprah Winfrey’s show, then you’re already familiar with the concept of creating a vision board, as taught by John Assaraf. Essentially, the concept to making a vision board, is put up photos of what things or concepts you want in life on a board and then visualize having those things or feelings as if they were already part of your life.

So this can be quite a laborious process, but if you really want those things in your life, then it’s worth the time and effort. Well when I was first introduced to “The Secret” at Raymond Aaron’s “Monthly Mentor University” a couple of years ago, I thought about putting together a vision board, but really couldn’t get past the feeling that clipping pictures out of magazines and using glue sticks to attach those pictures to colored construction paper and writing little sayings, felt a little too junior highish for me. So needless to say, I never did one, even though John Assaraf’s story of living in the same exact dream home he put on his vision board was quite compelling in itself.

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SIRIUS Satellite Radio announced that Channel 3 for a two week period beginning July 7th, 2008 will be become the ABBA Channel. To tie in with “Mamma Mia! The Movie” being released this month, SIRIUS is getting in the act in making sure you have access to an all ABBA channel to get your fix of ABBA songs as well as songs from both the original cast recording and movie cast recordings of Mamma Mia.

The limited engagement channel will also feature stories and insights from ABBA members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus about their many pop classics which have influenced recording artists for over three decades. ABBA Radio will also feature celebrity fans sharing their favorite ABBA music and personal stories, including stars from “Mamma Mia! The Movie” Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Christine Baranski, Amanda Seyfried, Dominic Cooper, Catherine Johnson, film director Phyllida Lloyd and producer Gary Goetzman, as well as Dionne Warwick, Alanis Morissette, songwriter Desmond Child, Joan Rivers, Brooke Shields, Andy Bell from Erasure, Randy Jones from the Village People, the cast of the Tony Award®-winning musical Spring Awakening, ambassador Ulf Hjertonsson, Per Gessle of Roxette, Nancy Sinatra and Martha Stewart.

Benny Andersson of ABBA in press release issued by SIRIUS said, “Thanks to ABBA Radio on SIRIUS, both new and longtime fans have a place to experience the original music of ABBA, together with the new songs produced for the soundtrack to Mamma Mia! The Movie, in a distinctively innovative way. ABBA Radio allows for our early songs to join the new ones in harmony on SIRIUS’ national platform, and engage all generations of listeners.” (more…)

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