Every so often I'll get an email with a link to a video that I feel compelled to share with friends, business colleagues, and even mutual critics.

The video below was forwarded to me by our writer Ian Alterman a few weeks ago. It is one of those brilliant moments that can slap a smile on any cynic's face. And it got me thinking about the true power of music and how sharing it can be a grand and wonderful thing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Happy Holidays from me, Richard, and the Culture Catch Crew!

What is it about British sitcoms that rarely translate to their bastard offspring here in America? - The Office being the lone exception thanks to Ricky Gervais's creative input and a stellar American cast including Rainn Wilson and Steve Carell. Shows such as Monty Python, The Young Ones, Blackadder, Absolutely Fabulous, Father Ted, Extras, and now The IT Crowd just can't be replicated in America.

When will we get it right? When will we allow for the discourse to set in? When will we see that the rules don't apply anymore? The world is vast but the internet is faster. And you can be at two places at one time; or three and four with Skype or iChat. I've been preaching for the past three years that podcasting has leveled the playing field with the media giants. Digital content is streaming everywhere. And if you have a grand idea, people will find your binary code and bring it to their laptop, desktop, or mobile device. Matt the "Dancing Guy" did it. Senator Obama did it with fundraising; the most successful presidential fundraiser ever. Ricky Gervais did it with his podcast, the most successful ever. And Culture Catch is doing it with our brand of Smart Culture.

I am very honored to have my song -- "I'm Still In Love (w/You)" -- in the new David Koepp directed romantic comedy Ghost Town starring Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni.

You can buy it below, and the B side, "Love Lets You See" -- a jaunty little garage nugget I wrote for the end credits. Though it didn't make the movie, it's still a tasty piece of pop-rock confection.

Many jam bands can noodle one into a somnolent zombie. Begging the listener to either go along for the ride or drift off into a drug addled stupor. Most often these well meaning acts lack truly memorable material, material that can elevate your spirit, levitate you out of your seat and get you to dance at the top of your lungs. The Dead could do it and do it while they took you on a tour of our American music lexicon via their varied song selection. Bob Weir’s RatDog can play circles around most bands touring the world today.

I've been deluged with a ton of indie music this summer. Most of it is quite remarkably unmemorable. As we all know, anyone with a ProTools or Logic set up can record their magnum opus at home. But that does not make someone a songwriter, pop star, or an artist. I recently asked a young woman if she could name one band that was currently buzzing about New York that might have the career arc of Radiohead. Without missing a beat she said "no." She furthered, "There's just too much music, too much hype, and no monetary investment by the labels to sustain the really good indie bands."

Yesterday was a day for hanging out with friends. Dodging a thunderstorm, our Lit Editor Ken Krimstein, his wife Alex, and another couple drop by for Sunday afternoon cocktails. Alex suggests we grab a final meal at one of our favorite NYC haunts. The rest is captured here by Mr. K:

When is the passing of a restaurant a cultural event? When the restaurant is Florent, the 24/7 former meatchoppers' diner in the former meat-packing district that finally expired -- condo-ed and clothing designer shopped into submission -- June 29th.

Do you ever truly leave your city of birth? Especially when you carve out your youth there, physically you may move on, but emotionally you can never escape. The flood of childhood memories may certainly be reduced to a random drip of good, bad, or indifferent, but the grasp of smells, tastes, and visions remain indelibly stamped in your psyche forever.

Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, a lovingly twisted homage to his city, part historical documentary, part “reenacted” childhood memories, is certainly one of the most inventive portraits by a filmmaker on his youth and memories. (It won Best Canadian film at the Toronto Film Festival.)

Very few albums have dropped me to my knees as of late. Can’t really recall anything mind-blowing in the past year. Oh well, so it goes in the land of the single download. Why even bother with an entire disc when you can buy or P2P a hot MP3? Reminds me of my days combing through the 45 racks at the local record store back in Akron. I get a warm fuzzy feeling thinking about the Saturday I begged my aunt to take me to her local record store and she bought me The Beatles’ "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" single on Capitol Records. Can you imagine buying a single with a "B" side that strong today? As a music fan, I want to, I really do.

I'm thinking of taking tango lessons. I passed a school on some side street in New York and imagined myself locked in step with my wife, reigniting our passions for each other. Why the sudden urge to dance again? Something that I'd abandoned so many years ago, something that I did just about every weekend in clubs like Danceteria or Area. Got me thinking about the world of dance in general.

Dance is unjustly ignored by most mainstream media outlets unless one counts Dancing with the Stars as a viable art form pushing the envelope of creativity. Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, Bill T. Jones, Mark Morris, and Alvin Ailey are the more mainstream dance troupes that continue to garner some second-tier cultural recognition outside of New York.

I felt compelled to share this very heartfelt review from a dear friend of mine, Gary Miller. Gary sent me an email this morning about Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton performing at the legendary Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night.

Gary's not a music critic, just an ardent and passionate fan of music; all styles of music performed in all sizes of venues. He buys more tickets to more shows than other of my friends. He loves the communion of live music, especially when it resonates with you deep to the core. Enjoy.

I've got a huge beef with mastering engineers. Why do most, if not all current digital releases - rock, R&B, certainly rap – have to red line every track and final mix in the mastering phase? They squash any and all sonic detail by pumping up the dynamic range compression. Louder is not better. Let the music breathe. Ear fatigue is a real and present danger pushing the already declining music industry closer to the ledge.

I must say--and it pains me cuz I'm a huge Springsteen fan--that The Boss's Magic is one such release. Besides being overrated, when compared to his majestic cannon of music, it sounds dreadful.

Integrity.

Most people gravitate to people with it. There's something to be said for a person you can trust. You know he or she has your back. You know you can call them the middle of the night to ease you out of a tight jam.

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
Director: Julian Temple

A few months ago I was casually listening to a Clash concert at Wolfgang’sVault.com while working on this site. Joe Strummer’s voice rose out of the speakers, imploring a screaming crowd: “You people here are still murdering these guys, I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying, but you’re crushing these guys…” I suddenly realized I was at that show. And the memory of that evening slowly started to bubble to the surface...

Charge less, sell more.

Seems like a simple solution for both the music industry and film/TV industry looking to regurgitate content into the digital domain.

Yet, I just read that NBC doesn’t want to renew its iTunes deal with Apple because they want to increase the costs of the content. Apple doesn’t. Stalemate for now…

Forget that P2P is on the rise because media conglomerates charge too much to begin with.

Remember your first sleep-away camp experience? Was it traumatic? Did you feel abandoned by your parents? Or perhaps you felt liberated. Remember the camp songs? The awakening of your soul? I remember how naive I was about my own sexuality. The following short story is based on my first camp experience. The names and characters have been changed to protect the guilty.

Wedged

The eleven-year old boy cracked an eyelid in the diffused moonlit cabin. He took a deep breath. The sweet aroma of pine trees danced in his nose. And the chorus of a thousand crickets accompanied faint singing and the pulse of mattress springs in the bunk bed above him.

Elvis once said: “Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can't help but move to it.” And if you ever witnessed a Dead show, or have caught Bob Weir’s outrageously tight outfit RatDog, a viable and mighty fine alternative to the Grateful Dead (RIP) and all other jam bands criss-crossing America, then you know how prescient that Elvis Presley quote was so many years earlier. You will definitely be moved. I was fortunate enough to catch more than a few Dead shows in days gone by and I can honestly say that, unless you were stone drunk (or too stoned), once the music began you’d find you feet tapping, your head bobbing, and pretty soon your limbs akimbo in some white boy shuffle that only Deadheads have perfected. The deliciously eclectic RatDog possesses all of that and more.

“It was the only way he could have ended it. Possibly the best example of pop culture since The White Album by the Beatles.” So claimed our literary editor Ken Krimstein.

And yes, the blogs are buzzing today, most folks proclaiming how “awful” the final episode of this much beloved HBO series was for them personally.

Yes, the juxtaposition of the abrupt black screen as the final image of the series ending finale of The Sopranos, like Richard Hamilton’s cover for the Beatles’ “White Album,” forces users to conjure their own impressions of what is and what may never be. (We were all waiting anxiousily for a genius ending à la Mr. Alan Ball’s award-winning Six Feet Under series finale, right? I know I was.)

Dirty Disneyland.

The real Sin City.

A town without ballast.

Lost Wages, er, Las Vegas.

An effigy like this could only exist in America.

“Affordable & portable.” I was having lunch with my friend Ed Bennett last week and we discussed the difficulties facing the music industry and the affect it has on new artists trying to gain footing in these increasingly slippery-slope days. He coined that very apt above-referenced phrase to describe the need to streamline a musician’s business approach.

I couldn’t agree more. In these days of dwindling CD sales, the death of retail record chains such as Tower, and the decline of the importance of labels (not all, but certainly many), musicians need to be aggressive marketing juggernauts.

Back from Austin and the South by Southwest crush and feeling a bit crispy around the edges. Sleep deprivation and too much good music can do that to a person. Had to sleep off my music hangover most of Monday, catch up with emails and paperwork on Tuesday, and get back to writing today. It was a wild ride for sure as Culture Catch hosted an ARTISTS SALON with amazing music every single night. In fact, we featured 26 bands from all over the world over four consecutive nights at the Canvas Bar & Gallery. There was so much variety and bona fide talent from act to act, I don’t know where to begin. Certainly some of these folks will be making their way into video podcasts on our site, and probably some of them will be making their way into the larger pop culture fabric of our society.

If you’ve grown weary of the winter weather, I’ve got the perfect antidote for your Nor’easter blues. And for all you alpine sports enthusiasts, the perfect audio stimulation to inspire your powdery day of boarding/skiing down a mountainside. Moreover, it even works wonders in the land of the sun. Might even lift you up beyond the smog.

Daniel Wylie is an earnest and prolific folk-rocker from Glasgow, Scotland. He enjoys wearing his heart on his sleeve, and that abets him in writing and recording near-perfect pop-rock tunes. Songs that slather on the optimism and self-replicating hooks.

Yes, I skied. I was in the mountains. Every morning my partner Richard and I would summon up the stamina to exercise for two hours or so. I do it in NYC, usually at the Central Park reservoir, but not from the summit of a Park City mountain top--9,000 feet closer to heaven. Walk from our Grand Summit Resort condo to the elevator to the second floor and then 20 yards to the gondola. Ride The Canyons gondola up the side of the mountain, grab another chairlift to the top and then carve our way down the mountainside, giggling like schoolboys again. The fresh air, the sun, the snow, the worries of global warming (lack of snow everywhere this year!), bills, podcasts to record, movies to see, all an afterthought for the next few hours.

Remember when you could put on an album to put you and your date in the mood? For me it might have been Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey, or Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Has sex become so co-opted in pop culture that we’ve lost our collective sensuality? From music videos to hardcore porn, television, the Internet, and DVDs, most, if not all forms of entertainment are flooded with bigger, better, harder sex with little sensuality and certainly very little romance. (And don’t get me started on love.) But is it good sex? Is it rich with passion and sensuality? Is it truly love-based, or just a facsimile of our collective Freudian desires? And what of romance?

Happy Holidays!

When I set out to pick my favorite music from 2006 I probably left off some obviously worthy releases. But with all the digital music available and most record retailers selling the crud major labels force-feed them it can be tricky terrain to navigate. The list below is a distillation of two previous columns plus some late additions that I finally got around to reviewing. And it doesn’t include much jazz or classical. I’ll leave those reviews to editor Steve Holtje -- far more competent in those genres.

Gateways of perception.

From Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, (his bastard son) Dune, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., and his television cult series Twin Peaks, to the film prequel Twin Peaks: Firewalk with Me, even his early abstract films, comic strip The Angriest Dog in the World, his internet-only series Rabbits, and Dumbland, David Lynch’s artistic expressions have always been meditations on life. Albeit one through an abstract prism. Life is a continuing convoluted journey through them, ultimately death being the final portal.

The Village Voice’s new management crossed a line that I shall never forgive. When they fired the Dean of American Rock Critics, Robert Christgau (photo: E.J. Carr) back in September, I stopped reading the weekly. Until Lester Bangs’s untimely death so many years ago, they were the yin and yang of rock criticism. Bangs was always the visceral, edgy writer, and Mr. Christgau the cryptic, cerebral scholar. As they offered up their craft, they helped to define unique rock criticism voices and set very lofty levels of professionalism that few rock critics after them ever scaled. (Well, those who actually began their writing careers in the late 70s onward. Legs McNeil had it going on for a short time.) Few young voices have impacted and inspired a young music-hungry generation to go out and explore fresh terra firma.

It’s difficult for me to recommend very many podcasts and video blogs, as I don’t really have time due to the extraordinary commitment to this site. But lately I’ve made a concerted effort to check out some of the quirkier and more interesting original programming offered in this digital domain. These are not content-dumped TV series from the Big Networks and Cable outfits. None of them are spectacularly highbrow and one of them is purposely lowbrow, yet all of them are very creative. They could really only exist and flourish on the web. Sure, a few of them could migrate to other arenas, but then they'd be selling their souls to the man. When you create your own programming bubble, you are the gatekeeper. Long live the DIY indie spirit. Without digressing further, these are worthy additions to your bookmark tab.

School’s in session, summer is officially over, and I’ve got another stack of CDs and DVDs balanced precariously on the corner of my desk that will crush me when it’s accidentally tipped.

Something's been bothering me this past week: Bob Dylan is one of my favorite singer/songwriters - I own nearly 90% of his catalogue - but is Modern Times really a Rolling Stone (and other periodicals) 5-star worthy CD? I dig his elder statesman roots-rock/Americana vibe, the production and mix are top-notch, his band is one of the best touring bands he’s ever assembled, and his singing and playing are inspired, but the songs…?