Add another honor to the list  for Sir Paul McCartney. The legendary singer/songwriter will be honored as Grammy awardâs 2012 MusicCares Person of the Year. MusicCares is a program that ensures music people have a place to turn in times of financial, medical and personal need.
Sir Paul is being honored not just for his creative accomplishments, but also for his lifelong range of philanthropic activities said Neil Portnow, president of the MusicCares program .
Ever modest, McCartney had this to say: "I've been given a great gift -- a life making music -- and it's my privilege to try to make the world a better place by giving back," said McCartney. "For more than 20 years, MusicCares has helped so many music people in times of crisis -- whether with emergency financial assistance or access to addiction recovery resources -- and it is an honor to be recognized as the 2012 MusicCares Person of the Year."
Mccartney will be honored in February, 2 days before the 54th annual Grammy Award presentation. Â If you have the funds, thereâs a silent auction, with an exclusive selection of luxury items, VIP experiences and one-of-a-kind celebrity memorabilia for bidding guests. The reception and silent auction will be followed by a dinner, the award presentation and a star-studded tribute concert. Â Proceeds from the February 12 concert and auction will go to the MusicCares program.
Congratulations to Sir Paul  McCartney!
When I heard Amy Winehouse had died, I was very saddened. No, it did not come as a suprise, but it's still a loss nonetheless.
I rememberback in 2006 when I first heard " Rehab". My head kinda exploded from how great I thought that song was. No one could walk past my desk without me saying " Hey... you gotta hear this". When the full album arrived, I was so pleased to hear that Rehab wasn't a fluke.
Perhaps you only know her music from the few songs on the radio. Maybe you didn't know that she released an album in 2003 called " Frank", after Frank Sinatra. Did you know she was a jazz singer?
Check it out:
Before she met " the bad husband" and went down the the road to drugs, alcohol and tats, she looked like this:
Note how healthy and sweet she looked.
A of this morning, there was no word as to the cause of death. over the weekend I read stories that said it was bad Ecstacy. But People Magazine is saying there were no drugs hear her , and she was in bed when she died.
Whether it was a drug overdose, or just complications from destroying her body, 27 is just too young to die. Yes, she is not a part of the " 27 club", but I, for one, wished she'd have been in the "83 club."
Do you think we would have had an " Adele" if there hadn't been an Amy????
RIP Amy, and I leave you with one more song:
Iâve lived in Madison for most of the last 30 years, and have seen a LOT of concerts over the years.
 Some of the shows that stand out in my mind include the first time I saw John Butler Trio perform at the High Noon Saloon. I could swear there were 5 or 6 people playing considering the sound. That was one great trio! I was at Headliners to see The Nighthawks, a blues band from the DC area. If you remember Headliners, the stage was VERY high. That night, one of the band members ( I think it was the harmonica player) jumped from the stage , hurt himself and couldnât perform the rest of the night.
I miss Lutherâs Blues, where I first saw Will Hoge, Hot Tuna and a host of other greats. Did you know the Decemberists performed there in 2004?
Jackie Greene was awesome at a free show at the Memorial Union terrace.
But one night stands out in my memory more than any other show.
 August 4, 1989, Bob Dylan came to the Dane County Coliseum. I had not seen him since the Rolling Thunder Review in 1975, so I was pretty excited to see him.
It was a dark and storm night, seriously stormy, and after only 4 songs, there was a power outage, leaving the venue lit by a few emergency lights exit lights. He stood around, strumming a bit to an instrumental jam, mostly percussion. The crowd hushed to listen, and were most patient.
 When the lights came back on, he went into Shelter From the Storm. It was perfect and I will never forget it.
Like many of us, I was introduced to lots of new music from my older sister. She received the very first Bob Dylan album for her Sweet 16. Considering he only sold about 2500 copies of his first album I came in on the ground floor of his career.
One of the first concerts I ever attended was a Dylan show in 1965! It was in October at Carnegie Hall. My birthday was ten days later and I asked my parents for tickets to the concert instead of a party. I took my kid brother Michael and my cousin Michelle. I was so excited to see him I could hardly contain myself! We had seats in the very back of the orchestra. The first set was acoustic and the crowd loved it. However, when he plugged in for the second set, people left in droves. This was just a few months after he got booed at the Newport Folk Festival for doing the same thing. Well, their loss was our gain and we ended up moving to about the 10th row for the remainder of the show. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
As a birthday present my cousin gave me 3 Dylan albums, where I proceeded to put a check mark next to each song he had sung that night. I still have the albums.
Here's what he sounded like at the Newport Folk Festival!
Like the TV stations, we have a  " Green Room" where artists can wait before a Studio M. We also have them drop back after the performance to leave their marks.
Check it out!
it's amazing to me how many musicians are good artists as well!
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Last summer I, of course, went to Alpine Valley to see Phish, the only band that I will go see at Alpine. It wasnât just another concert for me, but it was my sweetie Timâs FIRST SHOW! Of course, he has heard me play them all the time and listened to all my stories about the band. Heâs a big music fan, so I knew he would love it as much as I did. I was right. So when we had an opportunity to see them again the next month at the final show of the summer tour at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, we jumped at the chance.
The night before, we had been at the 40th anniversary Woodstock Concert, but were totally ready to see Phish. I love SPAC. Itâs like a smaller Alpine and my favorite venue so I was excited to share it with Tim.
We left with plenty of time to get to the venue and seriously crowd watch. We get about 5 miles from SPAC to see signs that said all the parking lots were full. As we inched our way closer, I could see kids hiking towards the show. I lean out and ask someone where were they were sending us to park and he said a couple of miles away.
Well, Iâm not a kid anymore, it was hot, humid and looked like it was gong to pour any minute, so we decided to just skip it and sell my tickets, which were in the SECOND ROW!!!! Tim was worried we wouldnât be able to sell them, but I said, just pull over. So we pull into this parking lot, I unroll the window and hold the tickets out. Immediately, a couple of kids run over and ask âAre they in the pavilion?â â Dudeâ I said, âTheyâre I the second rowâ. He handed me a $100 bill. â Plus $20 for handling charges?â He gave me another 20 and I swear his feet werenât touching the ground he was so excited.
I was happy to give someone an experience he never imagined, plus, if I had gotten my tickets for free  (which I usually do) I would have GIVEN them to him!
So I took the kids money, went right to Best Buy and bought an Altec Lansing iPod docker, a pair of headphones and still had money left to download the show the next day. All in all, it was win win for everyone!
But NOTHING is going to stop me from being at Alpine on Saturday night.
August 14 and 15 2004 was both an exciting and sad day for Phish fans. That was to be the bands final farewell before they went on their separate ways. The band was as choked up as the tens of thousands of fans who walked for miles to get to Coventry VT. Keyboardist Page McConnell couldn't finish singing Wading in the Velvet Sea and needed the crowd to help sing the chorus.
I wasn't there and was not happy I missed it.Â
Fast forward a bit to November 2005. Trey's solo album Shine had come out and he was going on radio station visits to promote it. I think you may have some idea how excited I was to actually interview him!
Back then we hadn't built our beautiful Studio M performance area, so I entered the room where he had just arrived.
He turns to me, holds out his hand to shake and says " Hi, I'm Trey. Thanks for having me". I responded with " This is a thrill for me second only to the time I made Frank Zappa laugh." I knew he was as big a Zappa fan as I was, so I was hoping that would pique his attention. Well, it certainly did and we spent about 15 minutes just talking about all the Zappa concerts I had seen. He told me how lucky I was to have seen so many shows.
That comment got me to thinking; no matter who you are as a performer, there is always someone you admire and look up to. He was a terrific interview subject, as you might imagine, with the conversation including stories about his grandmother as well as Krishnamurti! You can hear the Studio M here, as well as this Sunday at 9 AM and 5 PM.
I enjoyed talking with him SO much, I don't even care what I look like in these photos! It was GABBY'S HAPPY DAY!!!
You may already know that I got to host a Live from Studio M with Trey Anastasio during the period when we thought Phish had broken up for good, and Iâll get to that story later this week. But what you might not know is that I met him and Mike Gordon once before.
My BFF is NPR Weekend Edition host Liane Hansen. Every year we used to have a girls weekend in NYC. Sometimes I got us tickets to a show, sometimes she did. Several years before Phish had graduated from venues like the Barrymore to Alpine Valley, she did an interview with them. They told her they were fans of HER show as well, so when she asked to interview them again in the late 90âs they jumped at the chance.
Of course, we got tickets to see the show at Madison Square Garden. After the show, we got in line for a meet and greet so we could thank the guy from the Phish organization that got us the tickets. As we were waiting, a kid turned and asked us, âAre you the bandâs Moms?â Oh manâ¦LOL
Anyway, the next day we headed to the NPR studio in NYC for her interview. Trey and Mike showed up. First Trey shared a story that just happened. As he was getting out of the cab to come to the studio, a 14 year old boy recognized him and came running up to tell Trey that his mother had given him tickets to the show for his birthday and was SO excited to see him!!! Trey spent a few minutes  chatting with the boy. What a nice guy!
I canât remember much about the interview with Liane, but I remember sitting in the control room listening with THE BIGGEST grin on my face.
Oh yeah, the same grin I have in the photo we took afterwards!
Itâs no secret I am a PHISH PHAN, but when did this obsession begin? It actually started with Frank Zappa.
Zappa was my musical hero. I never missed a show from 1967-1978. In 1990Â it was announced he had prostate cancer. Apparently he had it for ten years and when discovered, it was too late. He died in 1993 leaving a large musical hole in my life; which brings us to the summer of 1994.
I had read about the neo-hippies that followed this band from Vermont. But wasnât really familiar with their music. When I was given a free pair of tickets to see them at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga NY, I took them, mostly out of curiosity.
We arrived at SPAC and I was shocked to see so many kids in dreads and Birkenstocks and the scent of patchouli oil wafting in the breeze. Needless to say, it piqued my interest. This photo was taken ( not by me) that very night!
We head to our seats and got ready for the show. The first song was good... the second song was great but when I heard them do their THIRD song, Frank Zappaâs â Peaches En Regaliaâ I was totally hooked! Now I had a band to fill that musical hole in my life!
By the time the fall tour rolled into town several months later, I had already joined the traders on line and started collecting shows on cassette.
I havenât missed a tour since.
As you probably know, Bruce Springsteen got his musical start playing in small clubs in Asbury Park NJ. One club whose name has become synonymous with Bruce is the Stone . Over the years there are always stories of Bruce just showing up and jumping on stage with the band. If I lived in Asbury Park, I think I'd be there all the time just in case...
This time the lucky ones were those who came to see Alejandro Escovedo, a friend of the Boss.
For those of  us who missed it, here's a taste of Beast of Burden.
I'm not sure why Pete Yorn decided to name his new music project after a European cave dwelling aquatic salamander, but if he stops by to play us some songs in Studio M, we'll have to ask him.
The Olms is a collaboration between Pete Yorn and...
Today's song was written by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary. It was inspired by the 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago. No one was inspired by the song this morning. It was rejected by almost all the listeners.
Today is World Goth Day, a day to celebrate the post-punk, anti-establishment, dark clothes-wearing subculture.
I'm pretty sure I was a Goth for at least for little while, for two reasons.
1) I almost hardly ever wear pastels.
2) I used to...
Hello to all from Nfusion. Another round of challenges has moved beyond us all. Congrats to those of us lucky enough to have survived to this point. Sad to see the others eliminated as they were all very creative and talented. Good Bye to our new friends...
This morning it seemed like just about everyone was in the mood for some Funky Cold Medina...except Kitty. This ridiculous song made it all the way to number 3 in 1989. Jonathan says any song that references advertising dogs from the 80's has got...
Madison's summer music festival season kicks off this weekend with Brat Fest at Willow Island, where there are more bands than you can shake a bratwurst at! Check out the Brat Fest website to plan your itinerary.
Next up is the Marquette...
John Fogerty is making the talk show rounds this week, stopping in to see David Letterman Tuesday and Wednesday, and the ladies of "The View" on Thursday.
He's promoting his new album, "Wrote a Song For Everyone" which comes out next Tuesday...
It's a miracle that both Jonathan and KItty wanted to hear Barry Manilow this morning. They were not alone. Plenty of Fanilow's called in to vote yes. One caller claimed to have seen Manilow in concert 25 times!
I'm not sure why Pete Yorn decided to name his new music project after a European cave dwelling aquatic salamander, but if he stops by to play us some songs in Studio M, we'll have to ask him.
The Olms is a collaboration between Pete Yorn and...
Today's song was written by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary. It was inspired by the 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago. No one was inspired by the song this morning. It was rejected by almost all the listeners.
Today is World Goth Day, a day to celebrate the post-punk, anti-establishment, dark clothes-wearing subculture.
I'm pretty sure I was a Goth for at least for little while, for two reasons.
1) I almost hardly ever wear pastels.
2) I used to...
Hello to all from Nfusion. Another round of challenges has moved beyond us all. Congrats to those of us lucky enough to have survived to this point. Sad to see the others eliminated as they were all very creative and talented. Good Bye to our new friends...
This morning it seemed like just about everyone was in the mood for some Funky Cold Medina...except Kitty. This ridiculous song made it all the way to number 3 in 1989. Jonathan says any song that references advertising dogs from the 80's has got...
Madison's summer music festival season kicks off this weekend with Brat Fest at Willow Island, where there are more bands than you can shake a bratwurst at! Check out the Brat Fest website to plan your itinerary.
Next up is the Marquette...
John Fogerty is making the talk show rounds this week, stopping in to see David Letterman Tuesday and Wednesday, and the ladies of "The View" on Thursday.
He's promoting his new album, "Wrote a Song For Everyone" which comes out next Tuesday...
It's a miracle that both Jonathan and KItty wanted to hear Barry Manilow this morning. They were not alone. Plenty of Fanilow's called in to vote yes. One caller claimed to have seen Manilow in concert 25 times!
