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"After many years of performing, and hundreds of requests for CDs, we are thrilled to announce Charles de Lint's album, Old Blue Truck. Recorded at Brock Zeman's Mud Music Studio, the CD features ten original songs from alt-country to psychobilly to heartbreaking ballads. Every song evokes a distinct reaction: a sense of the familiar, a touch of nostalgia, compassion, or mystery. And always, a greater appreciation for life.

Thanks to Brock Zeman for getting us into the recording studio. If not for his persistence, this album would probably still be just the vague idea of something I might do someday. Thanks as well to the musicians who played on these songs, Steve for a great mixing job, Michael for the great cover art, and to all my readers who've been asking for this album over the years. This one's for MaryAnn. We met through music and we'll be playing together until they pry our instruments from our hands.
—Charles de Lint "

It's really fine and you can hear a couple of tracks here

Go and buy it!

This evening I went to see Frequency Hopping, a play about George Antheil (composer) and Hedy Lamarr (film star), who co-invented --by using music--an early form of spread spectrum encoding, a key to modern wireless communication--which is called "frequency hopping. It's an interesting mixed media production that's a teeny bit too long (it's billed as a work in progress so there may be further work on it) but highly recommended. The actress who plays Lamarr looks uncannily like her --both she, Erica Newhouse, and Joseph Urla, who plays Antheil, are very good.

As a special treat afterwards, Ballet Mecanique was performed by robotic orchestra with film accompaniment. The music was written by Antheil in 1924 and created to accompany a film by artist/filmmaker Fernand Leger but it never quite worked out, partly because it was meant to be performed with sixteen synchronized player pianos. The piece was finally restored and played with the film in 2001 at the Film Anthology archives in NYC. It's not performed live very often--there was a siren, xylophones, bass drums, what sounds like a school bell, and eight player pianos that were doubled up. (don't ask me what that means). Anyway, a truly unique performance that will be on until the end of this month. Go get tix...and hear why NYC was outraged by Antheil's work back in the 20s. It's still pretty outrageous.