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Now that I live in Austin and I'm not writing a weekly music column for SFist anymore, I've been thinking a lot about where else I can channel my writing energy.  The redesign and revival of my TypePad blog art is the new religion has been a huge step for me, and I want to take a moment to commemorate the completion of one full week of posts.  Hooray!

by draw.vox.com

Recent highlights & post notes from art is the new religion:

12/5 - Frank Smith is a band not a man:  My dear friend Ashod IMed me today and gave me the gentle, friendly advice that I need to make good on my promises.  Meaning, if I say "I'll let you know what I think of the show" (which I did in this post) then I actually need to do it.  He went on to point out the times I haven't done it.  I do feel a twinge of guilt when I never follow up on that sort of thing, but then I tell myself no one's reading so no one will notice if I don't follow up.  So thank you, Ashod, for pointing out that at least one person does care and I need to do a little work on my follow-through (and perhaps my writerly self-esteem).  Stay tuned over there for my thoughts on the Frank Smith show!

12/6 - Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac:  Did you know that Fleetwood Mac was an amazing band even before Stevie and Lindsey joined it?  (I can hear the comment one of you is making right now, and I'm ignoring it.)  Peter Green was a phenomenal guitar player, circa 1969 before he went mad and left the band.  The writer of the Santana classic "Black Magic Woman"?  Peter Green.

I have so much to say about Fleetwood Mac that it's a little scary.  I once got into a half hour discussion about Fleetwood Mac with a dude in a bar in Portland -- he'd popped off with some ill-informed tidbit about them and suddenly we were in an in-depth discussion of their history and musicality.  As much as he initially annoyed me, I kind of loved him for giving me the opportunity to talk about an obscure obsession of mine.  It was an intensely gratifying experience.  I feel obligated to mention that Ashod was at that bar with us.

Anyway, in this post all I do is embed three YouTube videos of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and also link back to my recent 'Mac-related post here on Vox.  But the videos are really good.

12/7 - The GRAMMY nominations are in:  In which I ramble on about a company I worked for 8 years ago and share my opinions on awards for which I am not qualified to vote.  Bonus:  A comment from GRAMMY Nominee Ottmar Liebert!  (Thanks Case!)

12/10 - The Hacienda Brothers:  The good part is when I quote my friend's description of the difficulty of playing pedal steel.

And now I've realized that this post is really meta and self-promotional and therefore kinda creepy.  Sorry about that, it's just that I'm excited.  And it also illustrates the difficulty I'm having in separating the subject matter of what I post about there vs. what I post about here.  Though I have done it on occasion, I'm philosophically opposed to cross-posting, so at the very least I will try to keep the content on both blogs unique.  But being meta, self-referential and self-promotional is fair game!

OK I'm done now.