Organizing your music files is an vital skill to learn. Once your collection is nice ly sorted out, you’ll be able to find the songs you want briskly and easily. So performance aside some time and read through the following ideas I’ve come up with.

1. Create Subfolders – The single most important tip for organizing your music files is to produce subfolders in your hard drive. Don’t ever leave your MP3 files in one very large folder called C:My Music. Create subfolders prefer C:My MusicClassical, C:My MusicPop and C:My MusicSoundtracks.

2. Ensure your ID3 Tags Are Correct – ID3 tags are used to seller important information about MP3 files. Things like the song title, artist, album are kept and will be displayed by your MP3 player. Take the time to properly edit these tags – many MP3 files you download have the ID3 tag information all wrong. A good software program for editing ID3 tags is TagScanner.

3. Invest in Good Music Management Software – There are several wonderful pieces of software out there for managing music files. Two good ones come to mind. The first is MediaMonkey and the second is MusicMatch Jukebox. Both programs provide wonderful music management features like an integrated music player, compact disc  burning features and ID3 tag renaming.

4. Get Your Music Files from Legal Sources – If you have been downloading music using P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing programs prefer KaZaa, you will substantially prefer ly get music files which have strange names prefer 56_HeyjAck.mp3. My advice: Get your files from legal sources prefer Web music services iTunes or Napster and you will avoid this problem.

5. Establish Good Playlists – Virtually all software music player (e.g. Winamp) will allow you to establish playlists. For instance, say you’re in the mood for rock songs, you may point to your folder called C:Music Rock n Roll and establish a playlist from that folder. Save the playlist following it is created. When you next feel prefer listening to those songs, all you need to do is load that playlist instead of trawling through your hard drive and folders.

6. Get A Huge Hard Drive – I understand that this sounds a little crazy – but running out of disk space can and will ruin your well-organized music collection. Ensure you’ve enough hard disk space to seller your music files. Say you’ve 10,000 music files that you absolutely must retain and listen to. It’s a incredibly bad idea to store, say, 8,000 files in Hard Drive A and 2,000 files in Hard Drive B. Very messy. It’s better to seller them all in one hard disk. So get your hands on the biggest hard drive you can find.

I hope this post advocates you to organize your music collection a little better. I know it takes endeavor, but once your music collection is properly catalogued, listening to your music collection will be a much more pleasant experience. So don’t hesitate – get organized now!

So,on one of those sunny days, we wake up from this sweet dream and, in the absence of the notion that all this time has passed by so swift, we’re adults, living our “normal” lives, earning just enough bread to get by, doing what our parents always wanted us to do.

I know a doctor who still dreams of having a varying life, a life that will excite him… once he confided in me that he’d gladly ex change everything that he had built, if he might have the occasion to go back to what he loved best, music (he has been a guitarist in a heavy metal band).

Where do all these dreams hide?

Now you have your own company, or that job, which in societys’ eyes is respectable, in a wonderful company, and you decide not to let the old flame die. You decide to have a bit of fun and return to “waging a bet” in the music industry.

For you to be started as a musician, or manager of a band, you will need abilities in business, buying, sales, market research, man management, delegation of tasks and be fashion conscious.

All these actions together make up marketing in the world of music.

For this project, just like in any other business, you’ll need to designate a quantity which you are prepared to invest. Treat music like any other commercial adventure in your life. Never as a profitable hobby.

A Budget and Business Plan (with a target public defined) are important, just as in a “conventional company“. This way you will not fall into the trap of making emotional decisions, taking your attention away from your real objective.

Save your sentiments for your music.

What is the problem with this? Well for one, it’s made up. I just done it. And two…who on earth is R.G?

Now this is what I automatically imagine when I go through any website, be it musical or not. The problem comes in the fact that most testimonials are just too distant.

Sure people could put a Internet address down and even a picture. It does actually stimulate a very big amount. It makes you less distant, and now more reliable. However, we are now in the 21st Century and our selling techniques ought to really keep up with the technology on offer.

The technology? That is Flash. Now I’ve said in the past that a Website shouldn’t be made out of Flash…with the central reason being the search engines won’t choose it up. But Flash is such a easy tool that it must be integrated into our Websites for us to stand a slightest opportunity of selling anything.

So what do we need to do?

first up is to actually embed Flash into our websites so that it’s easy to work, like ably free, looks good, easy to session up and more than anything…fool proof for the user.

Now I have searched high and low for a flash player that meets those demands (I could not tell you how a lot of I have downloaded), and I have found one. Now I think that it is a traversty that this software hasn’t been shouted about.

You need a player- MP3 or Video (which may be found at this address: www.jeroenwijering.com. All you need to do is download either a movie player, or an MP3 player, upload the various players components to your website, upload an MP3 or Flash movie file (FLV), then tell the wizard (which may be found at this address: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/extras/wizard.html) where everything is stored. It’ll automatically give you the code. You copy and then paste it in to the source section of your HTML where you want the player…and thats it.

Simple.

As a side note: You see we ought to do everything ourselves so that we are not reliant on any other service. Youtube has a habit of stopping videos overnight, their quality is poor and it looks prefer we are cheap. Sure use YouTube for traffic generation and generating leads, but I would not use it to sell on my website – it is not professional only if you’re selling DVDs or software. Doubts will go into customers minds about your products quality…and the sale will walk away. There are additionally dedicated movie websites that charge per month…but we want to decrease our resources output. So what do we do?

So the best way is to be clever at the start and buy a Web hosting package that is cheap yet plentiful. Just be careful about your monthly bandwidth. Most hosting organizations now offer incredible bandwidth solutions/ month so you shouldn’t worry about that. I’m with Superb Internet Hosting who give me bandwidth of 750GB/ month…which is more than ample and at a normal hosting price. I do not need specific video hosting, poor quality free hosting and I do not need to pay anymore cash…bargain!

Anyway what do we actually do with our Flash players?

Ahh, I am glad that you asked. Now this is what your competition are not doing. You see you can record customers reactions to your music (especially at a performance ) and place these as testimonials.

Promote gigs by recording previous concert s/ gigs. Then question some of the goers before and after to see what they think? Promise them a free ticket, T-Shirt, compact disc  etc for their trouble. If you get some bad reviews (which can happen), edit them out.

If you are friendly with your testimonial makers, why not get them to do a short piece on your stuff? Only a handful (literally) of web sites have done this. Completely novel- they have interviewed buyers of the product to see what they think. Now that “nobody testimonial” has become a a person. It doesn’t matter now who they are. How influential is that style of testimonial? It generates thousands of sales weekly for some web site s.

You should be using the Flash players to performance your music (please no lower d quality or 1 minute performance versions). Now I have greater my sales by well over 100  percent by doing this technique. Throughout my texts I have placed an MP3. So instead of having a bulk amount of MP3s in one place – where they might freely be forgotten, I have placed them throughout and leveraged the same  set of MP3s to a better advantage.

The Flash players should be used to interview your group or yourself. Because the Web is so faceless, adding a “face” to your web site improves your credibility ten-fold. If you’re the head of the company/ web site, have you on your sales pages stating what you’re actually selling- pointing out rewards to the customer, backing up your text.

If you do not like what you look like, the Flash players ought to be used to performance your voice to help and direct people into making the proper decision.

Got a video or DVD? Flash player it at a reasonable size and quality to demonstrate what you have. Sales will increase with a demo of what you have.

Always recall though, that some individuals do not want to sit down and listen to you stating what you can be done. They want to see what can be done… that’s the difference. If you play the guitar…Flash player yourself playing a certain specific style on one page and another style on another page. Therefore if I want to know how to make Flamenco music I don’t want to see loads of other styles before you get to mine. Don’t speak the specific style, just play it (and make it sound cool, vibrant and listenable).

So as you can see, there are a large amount of scope for Flash players and they ought to be right up there with your top music marketing strategies.

The development of human music occurred against the backdrop of natural sounds prefer the lapping of ocean waves, the rippling of river water, the singing of birds and sounds created by other animals. Prehistoric music, more commonly referred to as primitive music, is the name given to all music produced by preliterate cultures, beginning somewhere in wonderfully late geological history.

The prehistoric period is considered to have ended with the creation of writing, and with it, by definition, prehistoric music. “Ancient music” is the term given to the music that followed. This music was produced by various early cultures, particularly Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Mesopotamians and citizens of the Muslim world, as well as Asiatic cultures.

Following ancient music, came “early” music which is a wonderfully general term referring to music in the European classical tradition from the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, until the end of the Baroque period in the 18th Century. Music within this enormous time span was extremely diverse, encompassing multiple cultural traditions throughout a broad  geographic region. What unified these many cultures in the Middle Ages was the Roman Catholic Church, and its music served as a focal point for music development for the first centuries of this period.

The Medieval period (from the 9th to the 14th Centuries) has been rich in musical history as attested by the artistic renditions of instruments, writings about music, and other historical references. The only collection of music which has survived from pre-900 AD to the present is the liturgical music of the Catholic Church, the largest part of which is called the Gregorian chants.

Renaissance music followed the medieval era, but the beginning of Renaissance music isn’t as apparent ly marked as the start of the Renaissance in the other arts, and began, not in Italy, but in northern Europe especially central France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The invention of the printing press had an immense influence on the dissemination of musical styles and by the 15th century, composers and singers from these Low Countries begin to spread over all of Europe.

Baroque music became quite popular after 1600, and instrumental music became dominant. Although strong religious musical traditions continued, secular music came to the forefront with the development of the sonata, the concert o and concert o grosso. In Baroque music the keyboard, particularly the harpsichord, is the dominant instrument. The three most outstanding composers of this period are J.S. Bach, G. F. Handel and A. Vivaldi.

The early Classical period was ushered in by the Mannheim School which exerted a profound influence on Joseph Haydn, and through him, on nearly all subsequent European music. Wolfgang Mozart was the central figure of this period and his phenomenal and varied output defines our perception of the Classical era.

Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert were transitional composers who led Europe into the Romantic period with their expansion of the current type of s, forms and even uses of music. During this Romantic period, music became more expressive and emotional. By the late 19th century, there has been a dramatic expansion in the size of the orchestras, and in the role of concert as part of a rapidly rising urban society. Strauss, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Wagner comprised a compelling group of Romantic composers. A prominent feature of late 19th century music is its nationalistic fervor, as exemplified by figures like Dvorak, and Sibelius.

The 20th Century saw a music revolution as radio gained popularity world wide and new media and technologies were created to record, capture, reproduce and give out music. Because music was no longer limited to performance venues and club s, it became possible for music performers to secure fame and fortune quite swift.

And music became more mobile with the use of headsets, compact disc  players, and iPods. Music of the 20th Century brought a new freedom and expansive  experimentation with styles and forms that challenged the accepted rules of earlier musical periods. Heavy metal music and rap entered the picture and joined hip-hop, jazz, country/western, ballads, folk, acid rock, Christian rock and a variety of other type ofs to establish today’s fascinating world of music.

There’s something deep within our psyche, which reacts and ‘ recall s’ music. It’s more than probable that sounds relating to music and rhythm came long before sounds relating to communication and speech. Today, this theory can be tested by noting a baby’s reaction to a lullaby as compared to speech. If you are lucky, humming might soothe the most fractious child and even send them to sleep! Music, in the form of rhythm has been used by many individualss as a way of sending messages to out of sight recipients; think about the jungle drums of Africa or the Alpine horn, the Aboriginal didgeridoo or the use of bells as a warning of attack.

The days of learning our lessons by rote have, mostly, disappeared. This is because it has, rightly, been recognised that we don’t necessarily absorb the content of what we repeat over and over again. But, as an aid to memory, music still has its uses. tunes we have learnt in childhood may be recalled far later in life than mere words. Music is a well known and much used therapy in illnesses that involve memory loss; Stroke, Alzheimers etc; and not only as a recall aid but likewise as a re-learning tool. Speech therapists use music extensively when trying to teach stroke victims how to speak again. The rhythm and melody of a familiar tune will frequently ‘trigger’ a positive response, when no amount of visual stimuli has an effect.

And then there is the cohesive quality of music; from the singing of a country’s National Anthem to a football crowds chant; from carol singers to brass bands. Musical participation has been used in every walk of life. The chain gangs of America’s Deep South would use music to get through the day and produce a rhythm to mundane physical labour. Sailors would pull a hawser or’sheet’ in unison while singing a familiar ‘hornpipe’ or reel; The exceptional gospel sounds that poured from the wooden churches of the Southern states black population were a potent community tool to  promote  and celebrate their culture; a lucky offshoot has been the inspiration of much of our modern rhythm and blues. Nowadays factories all over the world use ‘piped’ music to soothe the workers; if you’re doing a humdrum task music might make the time go faster.

When all of us think about it music is not just a pleasant pastime that is either passively listened to or actively produced. It has a much deeper, more fundamental purpose. Our reactions to outside get togethers may be completely altered by music. It could make us happy, sad, frightened, elated, thoughtful . . . the list of emotions it engenders are as long as their number. And words are not important to create this ambience; for instance, how would silent movies have worked without the music? Those Keystone Cops without the frenetic piano plinkity plonk; the doe eyed heroines without the sobbing strings; the immense sweeping epics without full orchestral back up? They just would not have worked. Nowadays, with the proliferation of world music, all of us listen to and find pleasure in music in many diverse languages, without necessarily understanding a word the singers say; much as opera has been once listened to as the fashionable ‘world’ music of its day; just another example of the emotive power of music.

Now,it is fair to say that music has an innate basis in our evolutionary makeup. we have might used it since homo sapiens 1st walked the earth. Other animals do use sounds in their day to day living (frogs croak, dogs howl, sheep bleat etc.) but, with the possible exception of birds, we are the only species to enjoy making melody out of sound. We’ve utilised every viable tool, from the human voice to electronic tones, to create ever more varied compositions. Wouldn’t it be intriguing to discover how soon into our evolution the power and beauty of the human voice was appreciated? As the centuries have passed musicians have been, rightly, feted for their skill to move us with song, melody and rhythm. Once musicians were revered as priests, interpreting the sounds of the gods. Nowadays we are more pragmatic; but we still need that harmony in our lives; even if it is only our cell telephone  ringtone!

While you’ve probably done all of the usual MySpace marketing like register your profile page and uploaded music, if you’re not taking advantage of other tools on the website, then you may not be creating that buzz you’re looking for. Sure, some fans will find you through their friends, other musicians, or from searching for music that resembles your, but to truly establish a fan base that will stick with you, you need to connect with people so they’ll be able to share not only your music, but part of your musical life.

There are many ways to produce a loyal fan base on MySpace including:

Forums and Blogs – These are places where you might speak directly to fans. Participating in forums and writing a blog will enable fans to find your profile page much easier than doing a genre search or other keyword search. Earning the companions hip of fans will make them loyal to your music.

Cross-marketing – If you’ve other artist friends who are using MySpace.com to get noticed by fans and record labels, partner up with them. You might swap profile page links, information about upcoming parties, and mention them in blogs and forums.

This is a wonderful way to increase exposure in the absence of having to do too much. If a record label visits one of the profile pages, they can want to check out other artists listed.

Fans will likewise want to see who their favorite musician listens to, which will generate more traffic for the both of you.

Upload Photos and Video – audiences love to see photos, video, and more from their preferred musicians because it makes them feel closer to them. Candid photos and video footage of rehearsals, behind the scenes at parties, and individual photos of you writing tunes or playing the guitar are what audiences want to see.

Upload Covers of Other songs – In addition to adding your own songs, why not cover a few classics? This will demonstrate for you r audiences that you’re diverse and willing to take risks. If possible, record a song that’s out of your usual genre. Reach new audiences this way and help record labels see just how skill ed you really are.

As you might see, creating a loyal fan base is not c club enging. The pointers above are particularly easy to in business into your profile page. Getting the word out there will be your toughest challenge since MySpace continues to grow each day. Word of mouth is still one of the optimum ways to get noticed, but uploading new material, showing audiences more of your personal ity, and making connections with others will advocate you stand out from the rest and advocate you find even more audiences.

The Internet has certainly advocate ed the new comers, however, providing a place for new blood to get the recognition they deserve. Still, marketing is tricky unless you can be as creative as you’re with your beats.

Whether you make your own beats from scratch or you download already made beats and customize them, locating a fan base and a potential record label to listen to the finished product will have the same problem. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, musicians had to rely on the coveted “Lucky Break“. You performed each show whether it was at a bar or club as if a representative from a record label was out in the crowd waiting to see if you had what it takes. While this is still a possibility, musicians are now  encourage d to be more proactive with their approach.

Social networking websites like MySpace.com cater to musicians of all forms understanding how hard it really is to make a name for oneself. Producers, hip hop musicians, and really anybody at all is  promote d to use such arenas to its full advantage. It pays to use the Web and flood every possible area with news about a new beat you just made along with other information like show dates and times.

often times, if you’re downloading already made beats with the intention of customizing them later, these websites will have areas devoted to artists. In these areas members of the website will be able to post their beats and other songs. This is a wonderful opportunity to bring together artists in one place so labels can effortlessly browse through the selection to find what they want. This is, perhaps, the biggest innovation in marketing of recent date; the notion of bringing together artists in one place so big wigs can find them.

Even though you live, eat, and breath the Digital Age never underestimate the power of the spoken word. Establishing a strong fan base both On-line and offline will stimulate legitimize your ability and skill. When you make it big it will be these 1st few audiences that you may continue to rely on to stimulate your record sales. Word of mouth will continue to be a great asset for the artist. When word of mouth spills over into the Internet it’s called viral marketing and has proven to be highly effective. Even though you’ve your own website and are a presence on those websites that provide downloadable beats you’ll still need to join every forum, group, and any where else that aids your projected fan base and peers that additionally make beats.

By having a visible face and a loud voice you’ll rise to the top and be noticed by labels. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your first few beats will rocket you to stardom. It can take years for your sound to find a market.  Many artists, no matter how skill ed, will feel discouraged by this fact, some will even give up. Just because the marketing campaign isn’t going as you like does not mean that you have just reason to give up. Be persistent in marketing and you’ll find that niche group which will then deliver you to fame.

When marketing your beats, it will be important to use all of the resources you’ve at hand. Even if you think that a specific method will only reach five people ; do it. Five people are better then virtually nothing and no telling how many people those five people will tell.

1. Ensure you have a press kit that includes a well-written bio, an 8X10 photo, CD  and contact info.

2. Go Regional. Regional press is by far the easiest press to get. Let them know your story and send in a CD. Shoot for the music editor or columnist and If they don’t have one assigned specifically, contact the entertainment editor.

3. Social networking websites are all about music these days. For instance, Myspace’s reach is incredible for gaining new fans. Where else can you find individuals to listen to your music in the convenience of their personal home? Ensure you’re updating your music, adding friends, keeping them all posted, and updating the tour dates. There are magazines on MySpace looking for music to feature all the time.

4. Radio is a wonderful way to share your music with the masses. You don’t have to approach the extensive ones-you can see success with air play on smaller stations as well. Send in your CD  to Local/Regional disc jockeys and look up college radio shows nationally and see If the y’ll spin your music. Online radio is select ing up these days too… USA4Real.com is a wonderful option… it doesn’t cost much and it gets your music heard.

5. Music licensing is a wonderful way to make money and get publicity. Try contacting some music supervisors on TV shows for a start. Send them an inquiry with your information and a link to your music. If you get placed, you could use it for press-and it becomes a story!

6. Music websites and e-zines are always looking for music to review. Look up their websites and send emails to their editors. Tell them why you are a fit for their magazine and ask if you may send in a compact disc. Remember, try to make contact 1st… sending in a random package may be useless.

7. Youtube.com and Stickam.com are excellent outlets to share your music. When done right, you can really start gaining a fan base. Try to do something charismatic and original. Reaching out to individuals On-line can do wonders. Establish a music video, a video blog, sing an acoustic  set, take a stab at some comedy– anything… Just recall, 1st impressions are everything.

8. Be philanthropic. Charity does wonders for publicity outreach. Locate something you believe in and offer to performance at their get together or give proceeds to their cause. Not only does it get you out there and give you a story angle… but it feels good to endorse out.

9. Send your compact discs to appropriate magazines for your music’s type of. Ensure you call ahead and find out the right contact, unsolicited packages get lost in the shuffle. A nice rule of thumb is to look up specific writers you feel would enjoy your music and find out how to reach them.

10. Try to book shows in disparate towns, that way you could readily label the cluster of shows as a tour and contact Local newspapers and radio stations and provide them merch in ex vary for promotions/articles.

Note that Public Relations is about being smart and creative. It’s about finding a reason for individuals to care about you and your music. Sure, exceptional music and a nice look are help ful, but you furthermore need to reach out to the public and come up with stories. Think outside of the box and you’ll really value from the results in no time. Good luck!

Yet another reason why a large majority of people are not eminently comfortable with classical music is its complexity and a sense of distance from the artist. Light music can be efficiently sung by ordinary performers with whom ordinary fans might identify easily. It expresses the emotions of ordinary persons in their personal language. Classical music, on the other hand, is rather mysterious and is rendered in diverse styles and it takes years, every now and then a life long time to understand .But its study has its rewards too. The more you study it, the more you find pleasure in it and the more you find it great and value the quest and hard work to study it.

The study or appreciation of classical music depends upon your personal taste. A form of music that appeals to you can not appeal to another individual. You can come across experts who can try to influence you by their judgments about the quality of music. You can listen to them, but you should not compel yourself to prefer the music that they prefer. Or if you come across a much-acclaimed piece of music that you cannot really appreciate, you do not have to blame yourself for not liking it. You can of course try to find out why the specific expert prefers a given piece of music. can be, you find some point to learn.

The most necessary thing about classical music is to listen to it as much as you can. Classical music compact discs are available from a lot of sources. If you’re a student, your college library may have an abundant stock of classical music compact disc s. You may listen to radio, watch television, and go to gigs and recitals. You may also get free downloads from the Internet, if you do not want to invest resources.

The music leans heavily towards a Jimmy Buffett, island-flavored sound, and you are sure to hear “Brown-Eyed Girl” at least ten times a night from ten divergent venue s. And that is as it should be, because anybody at all is generally in an island kinda mood. But there is much more to be found. You could hear jazz, reggae, hard rock and blues, from places prefer Rick’s, Sloppy Joe’s, The Bull, La Concha, The Hog’s Breath, and, if you do not mind walking an extra ten blocks or so, Jimmy Buffett’s own Margaritaville Cafe. What makes the whole scene so appealing is that the majority of the venues are open to the outside, and all this music makes a potent gumbo of sound in the humid air as you walk down the street.

Long ago, before there has been ever a road to Key West, the majority of the town has been populated by pirates, who help ed to ‘salvage‘ goods from ships that were wrecked on the reefs because someone had switched the signal lights around. Everyone knew who switched those lights in the first place, of course. But salvaging has been a tempting, lucrative profession in those days. That outlaw spirit still lives in Key West, and it can be heard in the music of performers in the venues and from street performers on nearly every block.

I individual ly got to experience Healthy doses of Key West music every April for 15 years, when I played at Sloppy Joe’s with the duo Faust and Lewis.

We developed our music and comedy act on that famous stage, and wrote gobs of funny tunes about life in the islands. we always did the 5-9 PM shift, so after our show there has been plenty of time to do the Duvall Crawl and check out the other acts in town. I became a excellent fan of Hugo Duarte, who has been performing at the Hog’s Breath Saloon late one night in early April. It has been uncharacteristically cool that night, with the temperature all the way down in the low 60’s, but my wife and I braved the chill to listen to Hugo for over an hour. His original tunes are nearly perfect, and tell excellent stories about life in the islands, and about ship captains heading somewhere down south.

I likewise got to know Terry Cassidy, who still does following noons at Sloppy Joe’s. He adds a smooth, bluegrass feel to his island music, and his song “Hooked On the easy Life” just about sums up the attitude of the Regional s.

Pete and Wayne currently handle the 5-9 shift at Sloppy’s, and you may be sure they are continuing the “What Me Worry?” attitude down there, with their adult humor and tunes.

There are so many more performers that have made a real splash on the Key West scene. Pat Dailey, the legend of Lake Erie, has been performing in February and March at Sloppy Joe’s for over twenty years. Bill Wharton, The Sauce Boss, one of the finest blues players I’ve ever seen, additionally makes hot sauce during his shows and serves it up in gumbo to people who stay around until the end. He makes regular appearances at Margaritaville. Ben Harrison, who with his wife Helen own Harrison Gallery, is additionally a renowned singer-songwriter who puts on mini operas about some of the colorful characters in Key West history, including a guy who kept his wife’s body in his parlor for years following she died.

All of us who have performed and written songs about Key West owe a tremendous debt to Shel Silverstein, who lived in Key West until his death several years ago. Shel wrote many famous songs, including “The Unicorn Song,” and “Cover of the Rolling Stone,” as well as countless award-winning children’s books, including “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” He generously gave of his time and talents to mentor songwriters that made their way to Key West. I individual ly spent an following noon at his house, and I knew I has been truly in the presence of greatness.

I recently did a weekend back at Sloppy Joe’s for the first time in four years. You could rest assured that the music and fun continue on, as vibrant as ever. could be it’s the gulf breeze. could be it’s the rum runners. Whatever it is, I hope it goes on forever.