\"Hello?\" came Tim\'s groggy, still-pretty-much-asleep voice.
\"Hi,\" Robert said timidly into the receiver.
Tim yawned. Was he annoyed at the lateness of the call? \"Oh, hey.\" He made a stretching sound. So adorable. \"Hey there, Robert. Robbie Robert....\"
Robert imagined him smiling. That felt good. Whether he was or not, it felt good to imagine it. It was all he could do for now. \"So,\" Robert began awkwardly, \"what\'s up?\"
\"Uh, shouldn\'t I be asking you that?\"
\"Well....\"
He imagined Tim smiling again. \"You\'re the one who called.\"

A long time ago, but not so far to walk. The celebrated city at the foot of the Atlas Mountains dripped with smoke and oil from the tip of a Master’s paintbrush, slathered in fresh-blood red, cornflower blue, dazzling white, and diagonal slashes of fiery orange cast off from the setting sun. The heat was making me sleepy.

Where did that sudden sensation come from; the one that burst through the wall of your bedroom last night with a sudden tearing flurry sound like bat wings, that jerked you out of bed by your feet and shoved you into the night with just enough time to grab your coat? Where did it come from? And why did it drive you of your house and down the street, always lingering a few paces behind, holding your eye to the grindstone and swatting at your feet with a cracked concrete club like a cop on the beat? \"Keep moving,\" it said, \"keep moving.\"

Movie soundtracks are tricky. Soundtracks should be a great mix CD that\'s worth your $15 and in some way goes along with the movie it\'s promoting. That last part gets me. I have trouble plopping down hard-earned cash for what amounts to a movie commercial. This movie, Wicker Park, looks to me like a turd from the trailer.

Amidst all the whiny, record label-assembled R&B bullshit groups tainting the reputation of a music made famous by legends like Al Green, Marvin Gaye, and Anita Baker, there are a slowly growing handful of vocalists I keep a close eye and ear on: Jill Scott, John Legend, D\'Angelo, and Angie Stone. I shit you not; my honky ass has actually known about Angie Stone for five years now. I used to play the hell out of her debut, Black Diamond, at one of my old jobs. I couldn’t get enough of it. It was funky in a gritty, sexy kind of way.

We are not nice here at tastes like chicken. Make no mistake, if you suck, we will tell you (sometimes repeatedly). Hell, Vinnie once wrote a CD review that equated listening to the disc to having a unicorn passing through his asshole. Yeah, we can be that mean. But I\'m not going to be mean to DJ Harry, because his newest album, Collision (SCI Fidelity Records), is damn fine.

Sometimes, in punk rock, a single band will do something completely different from the norm. Even In Blackouts is one of them. What is different about them is that the songs are done almost completely acoustic, and wind up being extremely well-done in the process. It is not that this hasn\'t been done before in small doses by other bands (get Green Day out of your head). It just hasn\'t been done this well.

Deep inside this dark black heart of mine, I must admit that I love the intimate music of female singer/songwriters like Sarah McLachlan, K.D. Lang, Tori Amos, and the amazing Aimee Mann. Quiet arrangements and tortured lyrics dissecting relationships, family, life, and love have gotten me through many a long night. But after a disappointing pop outing from McLachlan, and Amos lost somewhere in outer space, I was starting to believe that I would only have my old albums to listen to. Enter A Girl Called Eddy; an album that instantly was put on endless repeat in my CD player.

Strike one: the band\'s name is Walking Concert. Now, I really shouldn\'t be making fun of poorly-chosen names, but Walking Concert is, without a doubt, the worst name for a band in the history of the world. Ever. Were they afraid people wouldn\'t understand that they\'re a music group? Not only that, but it\'s a pretty bold statement to claim to be a walking concert. I\'d seriously like to take these guys up on that boast. If I ever run into them on the streets of wherever the fuck they\'re from, I\'m gonna be like, \"Do a show!