Seequing music?

As I was complimenting him on yet another drumming gig well-done (with Sherman Baker at Old Ironsides in Sactown last night), my buddy Matt McCord told me about a logo he'd just designed for a new website called seeqpod.com.

You know how irritating it is to listen to music on amazon.com or iTunes, where you get 30 seconds of decent fidelity or a whole song of lousy? Seeqpod.com is the answer.

There are surely other sites like this out there, but I'm not web-saavy enough to know of them. Or perhaps this is new. In any case, I've got seeqpod now! Yahoo!

You go to the site, enter a song title OR band name and up comes a bunch of song titles with a little logo next to them. You click the logo and the song moves to a playlist and starts playing. The whole song. In decent (not great, of course) sound. Yeah!

Then you click on another song, and add that to your playlist. Then search some more songs. Some songs sound better than others. I listened to some songs by The Magnetic Fields and then flipped to Of Montreal, which had better sound (and better songs).

When you click on options, you get them: links to the band's blog, MySpace page, Wikipedia entry, ringtones, tour dates, lyrics, news and of course, buy. It's all good!

Go play with it, it's cool, and let me know what you find out about it.

Me, I'm heading out to plaster midtown Sacramento with fliers for my first live talk show: "A Musical Dialogue with Gregg Coffin" at the Geery Theatre, 22nd and L in midtown Sacramento. 8 p.m Thursday, Jan. 24. Tickets are $10 and are available at The Beat or on tickets.com. Or comment here, I'll get 'em to you. It's a tiny theatre, 49 seats. It's going to be fantastic!

Coffin is a very talented, very smart guy who knows how to talk about his art. I have listened to him talk about music, the inspirations and mechanics and difficulties, a number of times. It's been so great, I wanted to share him with you. Coffin has written three nationally-produced musicals, Convenience, Five Course Love and rightnextto me, which is currently playing at the B Street Theatre in Sacramento through Feb. 24.

rightnextto me is an ambitious exploration of love and life and death with a complex structure and powerful emotions portrayed. They're much bigger subjects than his last show, Five Course Love, a one act that was loaded with laughs and played the Minetta Lane Theatre, Off-Broadway in NYC. rightnextto me takes more chances, and we'll be talking about them, where they worked, where they didn't.

What's great about this event is that Gregg is still honing the show - you get to watch an artist IN the process. And we won't just be talking. To illustrate points, Gregg will play the grand piano, performing songs and sections and what-might-have-been songs...

It's going to be simple, informal and fascinating. Be there!